THE INVISIBLE MAN

by

H. G. Wells

Scanned and proofread by Martin Guy .
First digital edition: 1996.
Last correction: 1 March 2003.


CHAPTER 1

THE STRANGE MAN'S ARRIVAL


The stranger came early in February one wintry day, through a biting
wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down,
walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station and carrying a
little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up
from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of
his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against
his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried.
He staggered into the Coach and Horses, more dead than alive as it seemed,
and flung his portmanteau down. `A fire,' he cried, `in the name of
human charity! A room and a fire!' He stamped and shook the snow from
off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs Hall into her guest parlour to
strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a ready
acquiescence to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table,
he took up his quarters in the inn.

Mrs Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him a
meal with her own hands. A guest to stop at Iping in the winter-time was
an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no `haggler,'
and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune.
As soon as the bacon was well under way, and Millie, her lymphatic aid,
had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen expressions of contempt,
she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the parlour and began to
lay them with the utmost ‚clat. Although the fire was burning up briskly,
she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat,
standing with his back to her and staring out of the window at the
falling snow in the yard. His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and
he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed that the melted snow that
still sprinkled his shoulders dripped upon her carpet. `Can I take your
hat and coat, sir,' she said, `and give them a good dry in the kitchen?'

`No,' he said without turning.

She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her question.

He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. `I prefer to
keep them on,' he said with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore big
blue spectacles with side-lights and had a bushy side-whisker over his
coat-collar that completely hid his face.

`Very well, sir,' she said. `As you like. In a bit the room will be
warmer.'

He made no answer and had turned his face away from her again; and Mrs
Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed, laid the
rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room.
When she returned he was still standing there like a man of stone, his
back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping hat-brim turned down,
hiding his face and ears completely. She put down the eggs and bacon
with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him, `Your
lunch is served, sir.'

`Thank you,' he said at the same time, and did not stir until she was
closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table.

As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at
regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a spoon
being rapidly whisked round a basin. `That girl!' she said. `There!
I clean forgot it. It's her being so long!' And while she herself
finished mixing the mustard, she gave Millie a few verbal stabs for her
excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs, laid the table,
and done everything, while Millie (help indeed!) had only succeeded in
delaying the mustard. And him a new guest and wanting to stay! Then she
filled the mustard pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon
a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour.

She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved quickly,
so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing behind
the table. It would seem he was picking something from the floor.
She rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she noticed
the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair in front
of the fire. A pair of wet boots threatened rust to her steel fender.
She went to these things resolutely. `I suppose I may have them to dry
now,' she said in a voice that brooked no denial.

`Leave the hat,' said her visitor in a muffled voice, and turning she
saw he had raised his head and was sitting looking at her.

For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.

He held a white cloth -- it was a serviette he had brought with him
-- over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jjaws were
completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice.
But it was not that which startled Mrs Hall. It was the fact that all
his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and
that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed
excepting only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright pink, and shiny just
as it had been at first. He wore a dark- brown velvet jacket with a high
black linen lined collar turned up about his neck. The thick black hair,
escaping as it could below and between the cross bandages, projected in
curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance conceivable.
This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated,
that for a moment she was rigid.

He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she saw
now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his inscrutable
blue glasses. `Leave the hat,' he said, speaking very distinctly through
the white cloth.

Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She placed
the hat on the chair again by the fire. `I didn't know, sir,' she began,
`that -- ' and she stopped embarrassed.

`Thank you,' he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then at
her again.

`I'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once,' she said, and carried
his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his white-swathed head and
blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his napkin was
still in front of his face. She shivered a little as she closed the door
behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise and perplexity.
`I never,' she whispered. `There!' She went quite softly to the kitchen,
and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what she was messing about with now,
when she got there.

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced
inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette and resumed
his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window,
took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand,
walked across the room and pulled the blind down to the top of the white
muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in twilight.
This done, he returned with an easier air to the table and his meal.

`The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or something,' said
Mrs Hall. `What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!'

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended the
traveller's coat upon this. `And they goggles! Why, he looked more like
a divin' helmet than a human man!' She hung his muffler on a corner of
the horse. `And holding that handkercher over his mouth all the time.
Talkin' through it! ... Perhaps his mouth was hurt too -- maybe.'

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. `Bless my soul alive!'
she said, going off at a tangent; `ain't you done them taters yet,
Millie?'

When Mrs Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea that his
mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident she supposed
him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking a pipe, and all
the time that she was in the room he never loosened the silk muffler he
had wrapped round the lower part of his face to put the mouthpiece to
his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for she saw he glanced at it as it
smouldered out. He sat in the corner with his back to the window-blind and
spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being comfortably warmed through,
with less aggressive brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent
a kind of red animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto.

`I have some luggage,' he said, `at Bramblehurst station,' and he asked
her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged head quite politely
in acknowledgment of her explanation. `To-morrow!' he said. `There is no
speedier delivery?' and seemed quite disappointed when she answered `No.'
Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who would go over?

Mrs Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a
conversation. `It's a steep road by the down, sir,' she said in answer to
the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an opening said, `It was
there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago and more. A gentleman killed,
besides his coachman. Accidents, sir, happen in a moment, don't they?'

But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. `They do,' he said through
his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable glasses.

`But they take long enough to get well, sir, don't they?... There was my
sister's son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it in the
'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up, sir. You'd hardly
believe it. It's regular given me a dread of a scythe, sir.'

`I can quite understand that,' said the visitor.

`He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an op' ration -- he
was that bad, sir.'

The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite
and kill in his mouth. `Was he?' he said.

`He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for him,
as I had -- my sister being took up with her little ones so much.
There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that if I may
make so bold as to say it, sir -- '

`Will you get me some matches?' said the visitor, quite abruptly.
`My pipe is out.

Mrs Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him, after
telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment, and
remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches.

`Thanks,' he said concisely, as she put them down, and turned his
shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was altogether
too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the topic of operations
and bandages. She did not `make so bold as to say,' however, after all.
But his snubbing way had irritated her, and Millie had a hot time of it
that afternoon.

The visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without giving
the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part he was quite
still during that time; it would seem he sat in the growing darkness
smoking in the firelight, perhaps dozing.

Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals, and
for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room. He seemed
to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked as he sat down again.



CHAPTER 2

MR TEDDY HENFREY'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS


At four o'clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs Hall was screwing
up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some tea,
Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. `My sakes! Mrs Hall,'
said he, `but this is terrible weather for thin boots!' The snow outside
was falling faster.

Mrs Hall agreed with him, and then noticed he had his bag and hit upon a
brilliant idea. `Now you're here, Mr Teddy,' said she, `I'd be glad if
you'd give th' old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. 'Tis going,
and it strikes well and hearty; but the hour-hand won't do nuthin'
but point at six.'

And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and rapped
and entered.

Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in the armchair
before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged head drooping on
one side. The only light in the room was the red glow from the fire --
which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals, but left his downcast
face in darkness -- and the scanty vestiges of the day that came in
through the open door. Everything was ruddy, shadowy, and indistinct to
her, the more so since she had just been lighting the bar lamp, and her
eyes were dazzled. But for a second it seemed to her that the man she
looked at had an enormous mouth wide open, -- a vast and incredible mouth
that swallowed the whole of the lower portion of his face. It was the
sensation of a moment: the white- bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes,
and this huge yawn below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair,
put up his hand. She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter,
and she saw him more clearly, with the muffler held to his face just as
she had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied,
had tricked her.

`Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the clock, sir?'
she said, recovering from her momentary shock.

`Look at the clock?' he said, staring round in a drowsy manner and
speaking over his hand, and then getting more fully awake, `certainly.'

Mrs Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched himself.
Then came the light, and Mr Teddy Henfrey, entering, was confronted by
this bandaged person. He was, he says, `taken aback.'

`Good-afternoon,' said the stranger, regarding him, as Mr Henfrey says
with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles, `like a lobster.

`I hope,' said Mr Henfrey, `that it's no intrusion.'

`None whatever,' said the stranger. `Though I understand,' he said,
turning to Mrs Hall, `that this room is really to be mine for my own
private use.

`I thought, sir,' said Mrs Hall, `you'd prefer the clock -- ' She was
going to say `mended.'

`Certainly,' said the stranger, `certainly -- but, as a rule, I like to
be alone and undisturbed.

`But I'm really glad to have the clock seen to,' he said, seeing a certain
hesitation in Mr Henfrey's manner. `Very glad.' Mr Henfrey had intended to
apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation reassured him. The stranger
stood round with his back to the fireplace and put his hands behind his
back. `And presently,' he said, `when the clock-mending is over, I think
I should like to have some tea. But not till the clock-mending is over.

Mrs Hall was about to leave the room, -- she made no conversational
advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed in front of Mr
Henfrey, -- when her visitor asked her if she had made any arrangements
about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had mentioned the matter
to the postman, and that the carrier could bring them over on the morrow.
`You are certain that is the earliest?' he said.

She was certain, with a marked coldness.

`I should explain,' he added, `what I was really too cold and fatigued
to do before, that I am an experimental investigator.

`Indeed, sir,' said Mrs Hall, much impressed.

`And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances.'

`Very useful things indeed they are, sir,' said Mrs Hall.

`And I'm naturally anxious to get on with my inquiries.'

`Of course, sir.'

`My reason for coming to Iping,' he proceeded, with a certain deliberation
of manner, `was -- a desire for solitude. I do not wish to be disturbed
in my work. In addition to my work, an accident -- '

`I thought as much,' said Mrs Hall to herself.

` -- necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes -- are sometimes so weak
and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for hours together.
Lock myself up. Sometimes -- now and then. Not at present, certainly.
At such times the slightest disturbance, the entry of a stranger into
the room, is a source of excruciating annoyance to me -- it is well
these things should be understood.'

`Certainly, sir,' said Mrs Hall. `And if I might make so bold as to ask
-- '

`That, I think, is all,' said the stranger, with that quietly irresistible
air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs Hall reserved her question
and sympathy for a better occasion.

After Mrs Hall had left the room, he remained standing in front of the
fire, glaring, so Mr Henfrey puts it, at the clock-mending. Mr Henfrey
not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but extracted the
works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and unassuming a manner
as possible. He worked with the lamp close to him, and the green shade
threw a brilliant light upon his hands, and upon the frame and wheels,
and left the rest of the room shadowy. When he looked up, coloured
patches swam in his eyes. Being constitutionally of a curious nature,
he had removed the works -- a quite unnecessary proceeding -- with the
idea of delaying his departure and perhaps falling into conversation with
the stranger. But the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still.
So still, it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the room and
looked up, and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue
lenses staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front
of them. It was so uncanny-looking to Henfrey that for a minute they
remained staring blankly at one another. Then Henfrey looked down again.
Very uncomfortable position! One would like to say something. Should he
remark that the weather was very cold for the time of year?

He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. `The weather'
he began.

`Why don't you finish and go?' said the rigid figure, evidently in a
state of painfully suppressed rage. `All you've got to do is to fix the
hour-hand on its axle. You're simply humbugging

`Certainly, sir -- one minute more, sir. I overlooked -- ' And Mr Henfrey
finished and went.

But he went off feeling excessively annoyed. `Damn it!' said Mr Henfrey
to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow; a man
must do a clock at times, sure-lie.'

And again: `Can't a man look at you? -- Ugly!'

And yet again: `Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you you couldn't
be more wropped and bandaged.'

At Gleeson's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the stranger's
hostess at the Coach and Horses, and who now drove the Iping conveyance,
when occasional people required it, to Sidderbridge Junction, coming
towards him on his return from that place. Hall had evidently been
`stopping a bit' at Sidderbridge, to judge by his driving. `'Ow do,
Teddy?' he said, passing.

`You got a rum un up home!' said Teddy.

Hall very sociably pulled up. `What's that?' he asked.

`Rum-looking customer stopping at the Coach and Horses,' said Teddy.
`My sakes!'

And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque guest.
`Looks a bit like a disguise, don't it? I'd like to see a man's face
if I had him stopping in my place,' said Henfrey. `But women are that
trustful, -- where strangers are concerned. He's took your rooms and he
ain't even given a name, Hall.'

`You don't say so!' said Hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension.

`Yes,' said Teddy. `By the week. Whatever he is, you can't get rid
him under the week. And he's got a lot of luggage coming to-morrow,
so he says. Let's hope it won't be stones in boxes, Hall.'

He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a stranger
with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely suspicious.
`Get up, old girl,' said Hall. `I s'pose I must see 'bout this.'

Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.

Instead of `seeing 'bout it,' however, Hall on his return was severely
rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in Sidderbridge,
and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and in a manner not
to the point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy had sown germinated
in the mind of Mr Hall in spite of these discouragements. `You wim'
don't know everything,' said Mr Hall, resolved to ascertain more about
the personality of his guest at the earliest possible opportunity.
And after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did about half-past
nine, Mr Hall went aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard
at his wife's furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master
there, and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of
mathematical computation the stranger had left. When retiring for the
night he instructed Mrs Hall to look very closely at the stranger's
luggage when it came next day.

`You mind your own business, Hall,' said Mrs Hall, `and I'll mind mine.'

She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger was
undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was by no
means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the night she
woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing
after her at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes.
But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and
went to sleep again.



CHAPTER 3

THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES


Thus it was that on the ninth day of February, at the beginning of the
thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping Village.
Next day his luggage arrived through the slush. And very remarkable
luggage it was. There was a couple of trunks indeed, such as a rational
man might need, but in addition there were a box of books, -- big,
fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting,
-- and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containingg objects
packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity
at the straw-glass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves,
and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while
Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping bring
them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing
in a dilettante spirit at Hall's legs. `Come along with those boxes,'
he said. `I've been waiting long enough.'

And he came down the steps towards the tail of the cart as if to lay
hands on the smaller crate.

No sooner had Fearenside's dog caught sight of him, however, than it
began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he rushed down the steps
it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his hand. `Whup!'
cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and Fearenside
howled, `Lie down!' and snatched his whip.

They saw the dog's teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick, saw the
dog execute a flanking jump and get home on the stranger's leg, and
heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of Fearenside's whip
reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay, retreated under
the wheels of the waggon. It was all the business of a half-minute.
No one spoke, every one shouted. The stranger glanced swiftly at his
torn glove and at his leg, made as if he would stoop to the latter,
then turned and rushed up the steps into the inn. They heard him go
head-long across the passage and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom.

`You brute, you!' said Fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his whip
in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel. `Come here!'
said Fearenside -- `You'd better.'

Hall had stood gaping. `He wuz bit,' said Hall. `I'd better go and see to
en,' and he trotted after the stranger. He met Mrs Hall in the passage.
`Carrier's darg,' he said, `bit en.'

He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door being ajar, he pushed
it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a naturally
sympathetic turn of mind.

The blind was down and the room dim. He caught a glimpse of a most
singular thing, what seemed a handless arm waving towards him, and a
face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the face of
a pale pansy. Then he was struck violently in the chest, hurled back,
and the door slammed in his face and locked, all so rapidly that he
had no time to observe. A waving of indecipherable shapes, a blow, and
a concussion. There he stood on the dark little landing, wondering what
it might be that he had seen.

After a couple of minutes he rejoined the little group that had formed
outside the Coach and Horses. There was Fearenside telling about it all
over again for the second time; there was Mrs Hall saying his dog didn't
have no business to bite her guests; there was Huxter, the general dealer
from over the road, interrogative; and Sandy Wadgers from the forge,
judicial; besides women and children, -- all of them saying fatuities:
`Wouldn't let en bite me, I knows'; `'Tasn't right have such dargs';
`Whad'e bite'n for then?' and so forth.

Mr Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it incredible
that he had seen anything very remarkable happen upstairs. Besides,
his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his impressions.

`He don't want no help, he says,' he said in answer to his wife's enquiry.
`We'd better be a-takin' of his luggage in.'

`He ought to have it cauterised at once,' said Mr Huxter; `especially
if it's at all inflamed.'

`I'd shoot en, that's what I'd do,' said a lady in the group.

Suddenly the dog began growling again.

`Come along,' cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the
muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat-brim bent down.
`The sooner you get those things in the better I'll be pleased.' It is
stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers and gloves had been
changed.

`Was you hurt, sir?' said Fearenside. `I'm rare sorry the darg -- '

`Not a bit,' said the stranger. `Never broke the skin. Hurry up with
those things.'

He then swore to himself, so Mr Hall asserts.

Directly the first crate was carried into the parlour, in accordance with
his directions, the stranger flung himself upon it with extraordinary
eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter
disregard of Mrs Hall's carpet. And from it he began to produce bottles
-- little fat bottles containing powders, small and slenderr bottles
containing coloured and white fluids, fluted blue bottles labelled Poison,
bottles with round bodies and slender necks, large green-glass bottles,
large white-glass bottles, bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels,
bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps,
wine bottles, salad-oil bottles -- putting them in rows on the chiffonier,
on the mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the
book-shelf -- everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could not
boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded
bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the only
things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were a number of
test-tubes and a carefully packed balance.

And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the window
and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter of straw,
the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the trunks
and other luggage that had gone upstairs.

When Mrs Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so absorbed in
his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into test-tubes, that
he did not hear her until she had swept away the bulk of the straw and
put the tray on the table, with some little emphasis perhaps, seeing the
state that the floor was in. Then he half turned his head and immediately
turned it away again. But she saw he had removed his glasses; they were
beside him on the table, and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were
extraordinarily hollow. He put on his spectacles again, and then turned
and faced her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when
he anticipated her.

`I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking,' he said in the tone of
abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic of him.

`I knocked, but seemingly

`Perhaps you did. But in my investigations -- my really very urgent and
necessary investigations -- the slightest disturbance, the jar of a door
-- I must ask you -- '

`Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if you're like that, you know --
any time.

`A very good idea,' said the stranger.

`This stror, sir, if I might make so bold as to remark -- '

`Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill.' And he
mumbled at her -- words suspiciously like curses.

He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in
one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs Hall was quite alarmed.
But she was a resolute woman. `In which case, I should like to know,
sir, what you consider -- '

`A shilling. Put down a shilling. Surely a shilling's enough?'

`So be it,' said Mrs Hall, taking up the tablecloth and beginning to
spread it over the table. `If you're satisfied, of course -- '

He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar towards her.

All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs Hall
testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a concussion
and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the table had been hit,
and the smash of a bottle flung violently down, and then a rapid pacing
athwart the room. Fearing `something was the matter, she went to the
door and listened, not caring to knock.

`I can't go on,' he was raving. `I can't go on. Three hundred thousand,
four hundred thousand! The huge multitude! Cheated! All my life it may
take me! Patience! Patience indeed! Fool and liar!'

There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs Hall very
reluctantly had to leave the rest of his soliloquy. When she returned
the room was silent again, save for the faint crepitation of his chair
and the occasional clink of a bottle. It was all over. The stranger had
resumed work.

When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the room
under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been carelessly
wiped. She called attention to it.

`Put it down in the bill,' snapped her visitor. `For God's sake don't
worry me. If there's damage done, put it down in the bill'; and he went
on ticking a list in the exercise book before him.

`I'll tell you something,' said Fearenside mysteriously. It was late in
the afternoon, and they were in the little beer-shop of Iping Hanger.

`Well?' said Teddy Henfrey.

`This chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. Well -- he's black.
Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the tear of his trousers and
the tear of his glove. You'd have expected a sort of pinky to show,
wouldn't you? Well -- there wasn't none. Just blackness. I tell you,
he's as black as my hat.'

`My sakes!' said Henfrey. `It's a rummy case altogether. Why, his nose
is as pink as paint!'

`That's true,' said Fearenside. `I knows that. And I tell 'ee what I'm
thinking. That marn's a piebald, Teddy. Black here and white there --
in patches. And he's ashamed of it. He's a kind of half-breed, and the
colour's come off patchy instead of mixing. I've heard of such things
before. And it's the common way with horses, as anyone can see.'



CHAPTER 4

MR CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER


I have told the circumstances of the stranger's arrival in Iping with
a certain fullness of detail, in order that the curious impression he
created may be understood by the reader. But excepting two odd incidents,
the circumstances of his stay until the extraordinary day of the Club
Festival may be passed over very cursorily. There were a number of
skirmishes with Mrs Hall on matters of domestic discipline, but in
every case until late in April, when the first signs of penury began,
he over-rode her by the easy expedient of an extra payment. Hall did
not like him, and whenever he dared he talked of the advisability of
getting rid of him; but he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it
ostentatiously, and avoiding his visitor as much as possible. `Wait till
the summer,' said Mrs Hall, sagely, `when the artisks are beginning
to come. Then we'll see. He may be a bit overbearing, but bills settled
punctual is bills settled punctual, whatever you like to say.

The stranger did not go to church, and indeed made no difference between
Sunday and the irreligious days, even in costume. He worked, as Mrs
Hall thought, very fitfully. Some days he would come down early and be
continuously busy. On others he would rise late, pace his room, fretting
audibly for hours together, smoke, sleep in the armchair by the fire.
Communication with the world beyond the village he had none. His temper
continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man
suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things
were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence.
He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit
of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him, but though
Mrs Hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail
of what she heard.

He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he would go out
muffled up enormously, whether the weather were cold or not, and he chose
the loneliest paths and those most over-shadowed by trees and banks.
His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse
of his hat, came with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness
upon one or two home-going labourers; and Teddy Henfrey, tumbling out
of the Scarlet Coat one night at half-past nine, was scared shamefully
by the stranger's skull-like head (he was walking hat in hand) lit by
the sudden light of the opened inn door. Such children as saw him at
nightfall dreamt of bogies, and it seemed doubtful whether he disliked
boys more than they disliked him, or the reverse -- but there was
certainly a vivid enough dislike on either side.

It was inevitable that a person of so remarkable an appearance and
bearing should form a frequent topic in such a village as Iping.
Opinion was greatly divided about his occupation. Mrs Hall was sensitive
on the point. When questioned, she explained very carefully that he was
an `experimental investigator,' going gingerly over the syllables as one
who dreads pitfalls. When asked what an experimental investigator was,
she would say with a touch of superiority that most educated people knew
that, and would then explain that he `discovered things.' Her visitor
had had an accident, she said, which temporarily discoloured his face
and hands; and being of a sensitive disposition, he was averse to any
public notice of the fact.

Out of her hearing there was a view largely entertained that he was a
criminal trying to escape from justice by wrapping himself up so as
to conceal himself altogether from the eye of the police. This idea
sprang from the brain of Mr Teddy Henfrey. No crime of any magnitude
dating from the middle or end of February was known to have occurred.
Elaborated in the imagination of Mr Gould, the probationary assistant in
the National School, this theory took the form that the stranger was an
Anarchist in disguise, preparing explosives, and he resolved to undertake
such detective operations as his time permitted. These consisted for
the most part in looking very hard at the stranger whenever they met,
or in asking people who had never seen the stranger leading questions
about him. But he detected nothing.

Another school of opinion followed Mr Fearenside, and either accepted the
piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, Silas Durgan,
who was heard to assert that `if he choses to show enself at fairs he'd
make his fortune in no time,' and being a bit of a theologian, compared
the stranger to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained
the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic.
That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away.

Between these main groups there were waverers and compromisers.
Sussex folk have few superstitions, and it was only after the events of
early April that the thought of the supernatural was first whispered in
the village. Even then it was only credited among the woman folks.

But whatever they thought of him, people in Iping on the whole agreed in
disliking him. His irritability, though it might have been comprehensible
to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing to these quiet Sussex
villagers. The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then,
the headlong pace after nightfall that swept him upon them round quiet
corners, the inhuman bludgeoning of all the tentative advances of
curiosity, the taste for twilight that led to the closing of doors,
the pulling down of blinds, the extinction of candles and lamps --
who could agree with such goings on? They drew aside as he passed down
the village, and when he had gone by, young humorists would up with
coat-collars and down with hat- brims, and go pacing nervously after
him in imitation of his occult bearing. There was a song popular at that
time called the `Bogey Man'; Miss Statchell sang it at the school-room
concert (in aid of the church lamps), and thereafter whenever one or
two of the villagers were gathered together and the stranger appeared,
a bar or so of this tune, more or less sharp or flat, was whistled in
the midst of them. Also belated little children would call `Bogey Man!'
after him, and make off tremulously elated.

Cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured by curiosity. The bandages
excited his professional interest, the report of the thousand and
one bottles aroused his jealous regard. All through April and May
he coveted an opportunity of talking to the stranger; and at last,
towards Whitsuntide, he could stand it no longer, and hit upon the
subscription-list for a village nurse as an excuse. He was surprised
to find that Mr Hall did not know his guest's name. `He give a name,'
said Mrs Hall -- an assertion which was quite unfounded -- 'but I didn't
rightly hear it.' She thought it seemed so silly not to know the man's
name.

Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. There was a fairly audible
imprecation from within. `Pardon my intrusion,' said Cuss, and then the
door closed and cut Mrs Hall off from the rest of the conversation.

She could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then a cry
of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark of laughter,
quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face white, his eyes
staring over his shoulder. He left the door open behind him, and without
looking at her strode across the hall and went down the steps, and she
heard his feet hurrying along the road. He carried his hat in his hand.
She stood behind the door, looking at the open door of the parlour.
Then she heard the stranger laughing quietly, and then his footsteps
came across the room. She could not see his face where she stood.
The parlour door slammed, and the place was silent again.

Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting the vicar. `Am I mad?'
Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. `Do I look
like an insane person?'

`What's happened?' said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the loose
sheets of his forthcoming sermon.

`That chap at the inn

`Well?'

`Give me something to drink,' said Cuss, and he sat down.

When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry -- the only
drink the good vicar had available -- he told him of the interview he
had just had. `Went in,' he gasped, `and began to demand a subscription
for that Nurse Fund. He'd stuck his hands in his pockets as I came in,
and he sat down lumpily in his chair. Sniffed. I told him I'd heard
he took an interest in scientific things. He said yes. Sniffed again.
Kept on sniffing all the time; evidently recently caught an infernal
cold. No wonder, wrapped up like that! I developed the nurse idea, and
all the while kept my eyes open. Bottles -- chemicals -- everywhere.
Balance, test-tubes in stands, and a smell of -- evening primrose.
Would he subscribe? Said he'd consider it. Asked him, pointblank,
was he researching. Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross.
"A damnable long research," said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak.
"Oh," said I. And out came the grievance. The man was just on the boil,
and my question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription,
most valuable prescription -- what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical?
"Damn you! What are you fishing after?" I apologised. Dignified sniff
and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it down;
turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper. Swish,
rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he said. Saw a
flicker, and there was the prescription burning and lifting chimneyward.
Rushed towards it just as it whisked up chimney. So! Just at that point,
to illustrate his story, out came his arm.'

`Well?'

`No hand -- just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, that's a deformity!
Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I thought,
there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that sleeve up and
open, if there's nothing in it? There was nothing in it, I tell you.
Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could see right down it to
the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light shining through a tear of
the cloth. "Good God!" I said. Then he stopped. Stared at me with those
black goggles of his, and then at his sleeve.'

`Well?'

`That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve back
in his pocket quickly. "I was saying," said he, "that there was the
prescription burning, wasn't I?" Interrogative cough. "How the devil,"
said I, "can you move an empty sleeve like that?" "Empty sleeve?" "Yes,"
said I, "an empty sleeve."

`"It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?" He stood
up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three very slow
steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I didn't flinch,
though I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and those blinkers,
aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly up to you.

`"You said it was an empty sleeve?" he said. "Certainly," I said.
At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts
scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again,
and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to me again.
He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an age. "Well?" said
I, clearing my throat, "there's nothing in it." Had to say something.
I was beginning to feel frightened. I could see right down it. He extended
it straight towards me, slowly, slowly -- just like that -- until the
cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve
come at you like that! And then -- '

`Well?'

`Something -- exactly like a finger and thumb it felt -- nipped my nose.'

Bunting began to laugh.

`There wasn't anything there!' said Cuss, his voice running up into a
shriek at the `there.' `It's all very well for you to laugh, but I tell
you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned round, and cut
out of the room -- I left him -- '

Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic. He turned
round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the excellent vicar's
very inferior sherry. `When I hit his cuff,' said Cuss, `I tell you, it
felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there wasn't an arm! There wasn't
the ghost of an arm!'

Mr Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. `It's a
most remarkable story,' he said. He looked very wise and grave indeed.
`It's really,' said Mr Bunting with judicial emphasis, `a most remarkable
story.'



CHAPTER 5

THE BURGLARY AT THE VICARAGE


The facts of the burglary at the vicarage came to us chiefly through the
medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the small hours of Whit-
Monday -- the day devoted in Iping to the Club festivities. Mrs Bunting,
it seems, woke up suddenly in the stillness that comes before the dawn,
with the strong impression that the door of their bedroom had opened
and closed. She did not arouse her husband at first, but sat up in
bed listening. She then distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet
coming out of the adjoining dressing-room and walking along the passage
towards the staircase. As soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused
the Rev. Mr Bunting as quietly as possible. He did not strike a light,
but putting on his spectacles, her dressing-gown, and his bath slippers,
he went out on the landing to listen. He heard quite distinctly a fumbling
going on at his study desk downstairs, and then a violent sneeze.

At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most obvious
weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as noiselessly as possible.
Mrs Bunting came out on the landing.

The hour was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was
past. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study
doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the
faint creaking of the stairs under Mr Bunting's tread, and the slight
movements in the study. Then something snapped, the drawer was opened,
and there was a rustle of papers. Then came an imprecation, and a match
was struck and the study was flooded with yellow light. Mr Bunting was
now in the hall, and through the crack of the door he could see the desk
and the open drawer and a candle burning on the desk. But the robber he
could not see. He stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and Mrs
Bunting, her face white and intent, crept slowly downstairs after him.
One thing kept up Mr Bunting's courage: the persuasion that this burglar
was a resident in the village.

They heard the chink of money, and realised that the robber had found
the housekeeping reserve of gold -- two pounds ten in half-sovereigns
altogether. At that sound Mr Bunting was nerved to abrupt action.
Gripping the poker firmly, he rushed into the room, closely followed by
Mrs Bunting. `Surrender?' cried Mr Bunting, fiercely, and then stopped
amazed. Apparently the room was perfectly empty.

Yet their conviction that they had, that very moment, heard somebody
moving in the room had amounted to a certainty. For half a minute,
perhaps, they stood gaping, then Mrs Bunting went across the room and
looked behind the screen, while Mr Bunting, by a kindred impulse, peered
under the desk. Then Mrs Bunting turned back the window-curtains, and
Mr Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it with the poker. Then Mrs
Bunting scrutinised the waste-paper basket and Mr Bunting opened the
lid of the coal-scuttle. Then they came to a stop and stood with eyes
interrogating each other.

`I could have sworn -- ' said Mr Bunting.

`The candle!' said Mr Bunting. `Who lit the candle?'

`The drawer!' said Mrs Bunting `And the money's gone!' She went hastily
to the doorway.

`Of all the extraordinary occurrences

There was a violent sneeze in the passage. They rushed out, and as they
did so the kitchen door slammed. `Bring the candle,' said Mr Bunting,
and led the way. They both heard a sound of bolts being hastily shot back.

As he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that the back
door was just opening, and the faint light of early dawn displayed the
dark masses of the garden beyond. He is certain that nothing went out of
the door. It opened, stood open for a moment, and then closed with a slam.
As it did so, the candle Mrs Bunting was carrying from the study flickered
and flared. It was a minute or more before they entered the kitchen.

The place was empty. They refastened the back door, examined the kitchen,
pantry, and scullery thoroughly, and at last went down into the cellar.
There was not a soul to be found in the house, search as they would.

Daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed little couple,
still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the unnecessary
light of a guttering candle.



CHAPTER 6

THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD


Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit-Monday, before Millie
was hunted out for the day, Mr Hall and Mrs Hall both rose and went
noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was of a private
nature, and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer.
They had hardly entered the cellar when Mrs Hall found she had forgotten
to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla from their joint-room. As she
was the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall very properly
went upstairs for it.

On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger's door was ajar.
He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had been directed.

But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the front
door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply on the latch.
And with a flash of inspiration he connected this with the stranger's room
upstairs and the suggestions of Mr Teddy Henfrey. He distinctly remembered
holding the candle while Mrs Hall shot those bolts overnight. At the
sight he stopped, gaping, then with the bottle still in his hand went
upstairs again. He rapped at the stranger's door. There was no answer.
He rapped again; then pushed the door wide open and entered.

It was as he expected. The bed, the room also, was empty. And what was
stranger, even to his heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair and along
the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only garments so
far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His big slouch hat even
was cocked jauntily over the bed-post.

As Hall stood there he heard his wife's voice coming out of the depth of
the cellar, with that rapid telescoping of the syllables and interrogative
cocking up of the final words to a high note, by which the West Sussex
villager is wont to indicate a brisk impatience. `Gearge! You gart what
a wand?'

At that he turned and hurried down to her. `Janny,' he said, over the
rail of the cellar steps, `'tas the truth what Henfrey sez. 'E's not in
uz room, 'e ent. And the front door's unbolted.'

At first Mrs Hall did not understand, and as soon as she did she resolved
to see the empty room for herself. Hall, still holding the bottle,
went first. `If 'e ent there,' he said, `his close are. And what's 'e
doin' without his close, then? 'Tas a most curious basness.'

As they came up the cellar steps, they both, it was afterwards
ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but seeing
it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other about
it at the time. Mrs Hall passed her husband in the passage and ran on
first upstairs. Some one sneezed on the staircase. Hall, following six
steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze. She, going on first,
was under the impression that Hall was sneezing. She flung open the door
and stood regarding the room. `Of all the curious!' she said.

She heard a sniff close behind her head as it seemed, and, turning,
was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the topmost stair. But in
another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put her hand on
the pillow and then under the clothes.

`Cold,' she said. `He's been up this hour or more.'

As she did so, a most extraordinary thing happened -- the bedclothes
gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak, and
then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if a hand
had clutched them in the centre and flung them aside. Immediately after,
the stranger's hat hopped off the bed-post, described a whirling flight
in the air through the better part of a circle, and then dashed straight
at Mrs Hall's face. Then as swiftly came the sponge from the washstand;
and then the chair, flinging the stranger's coat and trousers carelessly
aside, and laughing dryly in a voice singularly like the stranger's,
turned itself up with its four legs at Mrs Hall, seemed to take aim at
her for a moment, and charged at her. She screamed and turned, and then
the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled her
and Hall out of the room. The door slammed violently and was locked.
The chair and bed seemed to be executing a dance of triumph for a moment,
and then abruptly everything was still.

Mrs Hall was left almost in a fainting condition in Mr Hall's arms on
the landing. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr Hall and Millie,
who had been roused by her scream of alarm, succeeded in getting her
downstairs, and applying the restoratives customary in these cases.

`'Tas sperrits,' said Mrs Hall. `I know 'tas sperrits. I've read in
papers of en. Tables and chairs leaping and dancing! -- '

`Take a drop more, Janny,' said Hall. 'Twill steady ye.'

`Lock him out,' said Mrs Hall. `Don't let him come in again. I half
guessed -- I might ha' known. With them goggling eyes and bandaged head,
and never going to church of a Sunday. And all they bottles -- more'n
it's right for any one to have. He's put the sperrits into the furniture.
My good old furniture! 'Twas in that very chair my poor dear mother
used to sit when I was a little girl. To think it should rise up against
me now!'

`Just a drop more, Janny,' said Hall. `Your nerves is all upset.'

They sent Millie across the street through the golden five o'clock
sunshine to rouse up Mr Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith. Mr Hall's
compliments and the furniture upstairs was behaving most extraordinary.
Would Mr Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man, was Mr Wadgers, and
very resourceful. He took quite a grave view of the case. `Arm darmed
ef thet ent witchcraft,' was the view of Mr Sandy Wadgers. `You warnt
horseshoes for such gentry as he.'

He came round greatly concerned. They wanted him to lead the way upstairs
to the room, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry. He preferred to talk
in the passage. Over the way Huxter's apprentice came out and began taking
down the shutters of the tobacco window. He was called over to join the
discussion. Mr Huxter naturally followed in the course of a few minutes.
The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself;
there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action. `Let's have the
facts first,' insisted Mr Sandy Wadgers. `Let's be sure we'd be acting
perfectly right in bustin' that there door open. A door onbust is always
open to bustin', but ye can't onbust a door once you've busted en.'

And suddenly and most wonderfully the door of the room upstairs opened of
its own accord, and as they looked up in amazement, they saw descending
the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger staring more blackly and
blankly than ever with those unreasonably large blue glass eyes of his.
He came down stiffly and slowly, staring all the time; he walked across
the passage staring, then stopped.

`Look there!' he said, and their eyes followed the direction of his
gloved finger and saw a bottle of sarsaparilla hard by the cellar door.
Then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly, viciously slammed
the door in their faces.

Not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died away.
They stared at one another. `Well, if that don't lick everything!'
said Mr Wadgers, and left the alternative unsaid.

`I'd go in and ask'n 'bout it,' said Wadgers, to Mr Hall. `I'd d'mand
an explanation.'

It took some time to bring the landlady's husband up to that pitch.
At last he rapped, opened the door, and got as far as, `Excuse me -- '

`Go to the devil!' said the stranger in a tremendous voice, and `Shut
that door after you.' So that brief interview terminated.



CHAPTER 7

THE UNVEILING OF THE STRANGER


The stranger went into the little parlour of the Coach and Horses about
half-past five in the morning, and there he remained until near midday,
the blinds down, the door shut, and none, after Hall's repulse, venturing
near him.

All that time he must have fasted. Thrice he rang his bell, the third time
furiously and continuously, but no one answered him. `Him and his "go to
the devil" indeed!' said Mrs Hall. Presently came an imperfect rumour of
the burglary at the vicarage, and two and two were put together. Hall,
assisted by Wadgers, went off to find Mr Shuckleforth, the magistrate,
and take his advice. No one ventured upstairs. How the stranger occupied
himself is unknown. Now and then he would stride violently up and down,
and twice came an outburst of curses, a tearing of paper, and a violent
smashing of bottles.

The little group of scared but curious people increased. Mrs Huxter came
over; some gay young fellows resplendent in black ready-made jackets
and piqu‚ paper ties, for it was Whit-Monday, joined the group with
confused interrogations. Young Archie Harker distinguished himself by
going up the yard and trying to peep under the window-blinds. He could
see nothing, but gave reason for supposing that he did, and others of
the Iping youth presently joined him.

It was the finest of all possible Whit-Mondays, and down the village
street stood a row of nearly a dozen booths and a shooting gallery,
and on the grass by the forge were three yellow and chocolate waggons
and some picturesque strangers of both sexes putting up a cocoanut shy.
The gentlemen wore blue jerseys, the ladies white aprons and quite
fashionable hats with heavy plumes. Wodger of the Purple Fawn and
Mr Jaggers the cobbler, who also sold second-hand ordinary bicycles,
were stretching a string of union-jacks and royal ensigns (which had
originally celebrated the Jubilee) across the road..

And inside, in the artificial darkness of the parlour, into which only
one thin jet of sun penetrated, the stranger, hungry we must suppose,
and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through
his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles,
and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible if invisible,
outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments
of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent tang of chlorine tainted
the air. So much we know from what was heard at the time and from what
was subsequently seen in the room.

About noon he suddenly opened his parlour door and stood glaring fixedly
at the three or four people in the bar. `Mrs Hall,' he said. Somebody went
sheepishly and called for Mrs Hall.

Mrs Hall appeared after an interval, a little short of breath, but all
the fiercer for that. Hall was still out. She had deliberated over the
scene, and she came holding a little tray with an unsettled bill upon it.
`Is it your bill you're wanting, sir?' she said.

`Why wasn't my breakfast laid? Why haven't you prepared my meals and
answered my bell? Do you think I live without eating?'

`Why isn't my bill paid?' said Mrs Hall. `That's what I want to know.'

`I told you three days ago I was awaiting a remittance -- '

`I told you two days ago I wasn't going to await no remittances. You can't
grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill's been waiting these
five days, can you?'

The stranger swore briefly but vividly.

`Nar, nar!' from the bar.

`And I'd thank you kindly, sir, if you'd keep your swearing to yourself,
sir,' said Mrs Hall.

The stranger stood looking more like an angry diving-helmet than ever.
It was universally felt in the bar that Mrs Hall had the better of him.
His next words showed as much.

`Look here, my good woman -- ' he began.

`Don't good woman me,' said Mrs Hall.

`I've told you my remittance hasn't come -- '

`Remittance indeed!' said Mrs Hall.

`Still, I daresay in my pocket -- '

`You told me two days ago that you hadn't anything but a sovereign's
worth of silver upon you -- '

`Well, I've found some more -- '

`'Ul-lo!' from the bar.

`I wonder where you found it!' said Mrs Hall.

That seemed to annoy the stranger very much. He stamped his foot.
`What do you mean?' he said.

`That I wonder where you found it,' said Mrs Hall `And before I take
any bill or get any breakfasts, or do any such things whatsoever, you
got to tell me one or two things I don't understand, and what nobody
don't understand, and what everybody is very anxious to understand.
I want know what you been doing t' my chair upstairs, and I want know
how 'tis your room was empty, and how you got in again. Them as stops
in this house comes in by the doors -- that's the rule of the house,
and that you didn't do, and what I want know is how you did come in.
And I want know -- '

Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands clenched, stamped his foot,
and said, `Stop!' with such extraordinary violence that he silenced
her instantly.

`You don't understand,' he said, `who I am or what I am. I'll show you.
By Heaven! I'll show you.' Then he put his open palm over his face
and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. `Here,'
he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs Hall something which she,
staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she
saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back.
The nose -- it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining -- rolled on
the floor.

Then he removed his spectacles, and every one in the bar gasped. He took
off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages.
For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed
through the bar. `Oh, my Gard!' said some one. Then off they came.

It was worse than anything. Mrs Hall, standing open-mouthed and
horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of
the house. Every one began to move. They were prepared for scars,
disfigurements, tangible horrors, but no thing! The bandages and false
hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump
to avoid them. Every one tumbled on every one else down the steps.
For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was
a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then --
nothingness, no visible thing at all!

People down the village heard shouts and shrieks, and looking up the
street saw the Coach and Horses violently firing out its humanity.
They saw Mrs Hall fall down and Mr Teddy Henfrey jump to avoid tumbling
over her, and then they heard the frightful screams of Millie, who,
emerging suddenly from the kitchen at the noise of the tumult, had come
upon the headless stranger from behind.

Forthwith every one all down the street, the sweet-stuff seller,
cocoanut shy proprietor and his assistant, the swing man, little boys
and girls, rustic dandies, smart wenches, smocked elders and aproned
gipsies, began running towards the inn; and in a miraculously short
space of time a crowd of perhaps forty people, and rapidly increasing,
swayed and hooted and inquired and exclaimed and suggested, in front of
Mrs Hall's establishment. Every one seemed eager to talk at once, and
the result was babel. A small group supported Mrs Hall, who was picked
up in a state of collapse. There was a conference, and the incredible
evidence of a vociferous eye- witness. `O' Bogey!' `What's he been
doin', then?' `Ain't hurt the girl, 'as 'e?' `Run at en with a knife,
I believe' `No 'ed, I tell ye. I don't mean no manner of speaking,
I mean marn 'ithout a 'ed!' `Narnsense! 'tas some conjuring trick.'
`Fetched off 'is wrappin's 'e did -- '

In its struggles to see in through the open door, the crowd formed
itself into a straggling wedge, with the more adventurous apex nearest
the inn. `He stood for a moment, I heerd the gal scream, and he turned.
I saw her skirts whisk, and he went after her. Didn't take ten seconds.
Back he comes with a knife in uz hand and a loaf; stood just as if
he was staring. Not a moment ago. Went in that there door. I tell 'e,
'e ain't gart no 'ed 't all. You just missed en -- '

There was a disturbance behind, and the speaker stopped to step aside
for a little procession that was marching very resolutely towards the
house -- first Mr Hall, very red and determined, then Mr Bobby Jaffers,
the village constable, and then the wary Mr Wadgers. They had come now
armed with a warrant.

People shouted conflicting information of the recent circumstances.
`'Ed or no 'ed,' said Jaffers, `I got to 'rest en, and 'rest en I will.'

Mr Hall marched up the steps, marched straight to the door of the parlour
and flung it open. `Constable,' he said, `do your duty.'

Jaffers marched in, Hall next, Wadgers last. They saw in the dim light
the headless figure facing them, with a gnawed crust of bread in one
gloved hand and a chunk of cheese in the other.

`That's him!' said Hall.

`What the devil's this?' came in a tone of angry expostulation from
above the collar of the figure.

`You're a damned rum customer, mister,' said Mr Jaffers. `But 'ed or no
'ed, the warrant says "body," and duty's duty -- '

`Keep off!' said the figure, starting back.

Abruptly he whipped down the bread and cheese, and Mr Hall just grasped
the knife on the table in time to save it. Off came the stranger's left
glove and was slapped in Jaffer's face. In another moment Jaffers, cutting
short some statement concerning a warrant, had gripped him by the handless
wrist and caught his invisible throat. He got a sounding kick on the shin
that made him shout, but he kept his grip. Hall sent the knife sliding
along the table to Wadgers, who acted as goal-keeper for the offensive,
so to speak, and then stepped forward as Jaffers and the stranger swayed
and staggered towards him, clutching and hitting in. A chair stood in
the way, and went aside with a crash as they came down together.

`Get the feet,' said Jaffers between his teeth.

Mr Hall, endeavouring to act on instructions, receiving a sounding
kick in the ribs that disposed of him for a moment, and Mr Wadgers,
seeing the decapitated stranger had rolled over and got the upper side
of Jaffers, retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided
with Mr Huxter and the Siddermorton carter coming to the rescue of law
and order. At the same moment down came three or four bottles from the
chiffonier and shot a web of pungency into the air of the room.

`I'll surrender,' cried the stranger, though he had Jaffers down, and
in another moment he stood up panting, a strange figure, headless and
handless -- for he had pulled off his right glove now as well as his left.
`It's no good,' he said, as if sobbing for breath.

It was the strangest thing in the world to hear that voice coming as
if out of empty space, but the Sussex peasants are perhaps the most
matter-of-fact people under the sun. Jaffers got up also and produced
a pair of handcuffs. Then he started.

`I say!' said Jaffers, brought up short by a dim realisation of the
incongruity of the whole business. `Darm it! Can't use 'em as I can see.'

The stranger ran his arm down his waistcoat, and as if by a miracle the
buttons to which his empty sleeve pointed became undone. Then he said
something about his shin, and stooped down. He seemed to be fumbling
with his shoes and socks.

`Why!' said Huxter, suddenly, `that's not a man at all. It's just empty
clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the linings of his clothes.
I could put my arm -- '

He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in mid-air, and he drew
it back with a sharp exclamation. `I wish you'd keep your fingers out
of my eye,' said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation.
`The fact is, I'm all here: head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it,
but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but I am.
That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin
in Iping, is it?'

The suit of clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon its
unseen supports, stood up, arms akimbo.

Several other of the men folks had now entered the room, so that it was
closely crowded. `Invisible, eigh?' said Huxter, ignoring the stranger's
abuse. `Who ever heard the likes of that?'

`It's strange, perhaps, but it's not a crime. Why am I assaulted by a
policeman in this fashion?'

`Ah! that's a different matter,' said Jaffers. `No doubt you are a bit
difficult to see in this light, but I got a warrant, and it's all correct.
What I'm after ain't no invisibility -- it's burglary. There's a house
been broken into and money took.'

`Well?'

`And circumstances certainly point -- '

`Stuff and nonsense!' said the Invisible Man.

`I hope so, sir; but I've got my instructions.'

`Well,' said the stranger, `I'll come. I'll come. But no handcuffs.'

`It's the regular thing,' said Jaffers.

`No handcuffs,' stipulated the stranger.

`Pardon me,' said Jaffers.

Abruptly the figure sat down, and before any one could realise what was
being done, the slippers, socks, and trousers had been kicked off under
the table. Then he sprang up again and flung off his coat.

`Here, stop that,' said Jaffers, suddenly realising what was happening.
He gripped the waistcoat; it struggled, and the shirt slipped out of it
and left it limp and empty in his hand. `Hold him!' said Jaffers loudly.
`Once he gets they things off -- !'

`Hold him!' cried every one, and there was a rush at the fluttering
white shirt which was now all that was visible of the stranger.

The shirt-sleeve planted a shrewd blow in Hall's face that stopped his
open-armed advance, and sent him backward into old Toothsome the sexton,
and in another moment the garment was lifted up and became convulsed and
vacantly flapping about the arms, even as a shirt that is being thrust
over a man's head. Jaffers clutched at it, and only helped to pull it
off; he was struck in the mouth out of the air, and incontinently drew
his truncheon and smote Teddy Henfrey savagely upon the crown of his head.

`Look out!' said everybody, fencing at random and hitting at nothing.
`Hold him! Shut the door! Don't let him loose! I got something!
Here he is!' A perfect babel of noises they made. Everybody, it seemed,
was being hit all at once, and Sandy Wadgers, knowing as ever and his
wits sharpened by a frightful blow in the nose, reopened the door and
led the rout. The others, following incontinently, were jammed for a
moment in the corner by the doorway. The hitting continued. Phipps,
the Unitarian, had a front tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured in the
cartilage of his ear. Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning,
caught at something that intervened between him and Huxter in the mle,
and prevented their coming together. He felt a muscular chest, and in
another moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot out into
the crowded hall.

`I got him!' shouted Jaffers, choking and reeling through them all, and
wrestling with purple face and swelling veins against his unseen enemy.

Men staggered right and left as the extraordinary conflict swayed swiftly
towards the house door, and went spinning down the half-dozen steps of the
inn. Jaffers cried in a strangled voice -- holding tight, nevertheless,
and making play with his knee -- spun round, and fell heavily undermost
with his head on the gravel. Only then did his fingers relax.

There were excited cries of `Hold him!' `Invisible!' and so forth, and a
young fellow, a stranger in the place whose name did not come to light,
rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and fell over the
constable's prostrate body. Halfway across the road, a woman screamed
as something pushed by her; a dog, kicked apparently, yelped and ran
howling into Huxter's yard, and with that the transit of the Invisible
Man was accomplished. For a space people stood amazed and gesticulating,
and then came Panic, and scattered them abroad through the village as
a gust scatters dead leaves.

But Jaffers lay quite still, face upward and knees bent.



CHAPTER 8

IN TRANSIT


The eighth chapter is exceedingly brief, and relates that Gibbins, the
amateur naturalist of the district, while lying out on the spacious open
downs without a soul within a couple of miles of him, as he thought,
and almost dozing, heard close to him the sound as of a man coughing,
sneezing, and then swearing savagely to himself; and looking, beheld
nothing. Yet the voice was indisputable. It continued to swear with that
breadth and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man.
It grew to a climax, diminished again, and died away in the distance,
going as it seemed to him in the direction of Adderdean. It lifted to a
spasmodic sneeze and ended. Gibbins had heard nothing of the morning's
occurrences, but the phenomenon was so striking and disturbing that his
philosophical tranquillity vanished; he got up hastily, and hurried down
the steepness of the hill towards the village, as fast as he could go.



CHAPTER 9

MR THOMAS MARVEL


You must picture Mr Thomas Marvel as a person of copious, flexible visage,
a nose of cylindrical protrusion, a liquorish, ample, fluctuating mouth,
and a beard of bristling eccentricity. His figure inclined to embonpoint;
his short limbs accentuated this inclination. He wore a furry silk hat,
and the frequent substitution of twine and shoe-laces for buttons,
apparent at critical points of his costume, marked a man essentially
bachelor.

Mr Thomas Marvel was sitting with his feet in a ditch by the roadside over
the down toward Adderdean, about a mile and a half out of Iping. His feet,
save for socks of irregular open-work, were bare, his big toes were broad,
and pricked like the ears of a watchful dog. In a leisurely manner --
he did everything in a leisurely manner -- he was contemplating trying
on a pair of boots. They were the soundest boots he had come across for
a long time, but too large for him; whereas the ones he had were, in dry
weather, a very comfortable fit, but too thin-soled for damp. Mr Thomas
Marvel hated roomy boots, but then he hated damp. He had never properly
thought out which he hated most,and it was a pleasant day, and there
was nothing better to do. So he put the four boots in a graceful group
on the turf and looked at them. And seeing them there among the grass
and springing agrimony, it suddenly occurred to him that both pairs were
exceedingly ugly to see. He was not at all startled by a voice behind him.

`They're boots, anyhow,' said the voice.

`They are -- charity boots,' said Mr Thomas Marvel, with his head on
one side regarding them distastefully; `and which is the ugliest pair
in the whole blessed universe, I'm darned if I know!'

`H'm,' said the voice.

`I've worn worse -- in fact, I've worn none. But none so owdacious ugly -
if you'll allow the expression. I've been cadging boots -- in particular
-- for days. Because I was sick of them. They're sound enouugh, of course.
But a gentleman on tramp sees such a thundering lot of his boots. And if
you'll believe me, I've raised nothing in the whole blessed county,
try as I would, but THEM. Look at 'em! And a good county for boots, too,
in a general way. But it's just my promiscuous luck. I've got my boots
in this county ten years or more. And then they treat you like this.'

`It's a beast of a county,' said the voice. `And pigs for people.'

`Ain't it?' said Mr Thomas Marvel. `Lord! But them boots! It beats it.'

He turned his head over his shoulder to the right, to look at the boots of
his interlocutor with a view to comparisons, and lo! where the boots of
his interlocutor should have been were neither legs nor boots. He turned
his head over his shoulder to the left, and there also were neither
legs nor boots. He was irradiated by the dawn of a great amazement.
`Where are yer?' said Mr Thomas Marvel over his shoulder and coming round
on all fours. He saw a stretch of empty downs with the wind swaying and
remote green- pointed furze bushes.

`Am I drunk?' said Mr Marvel. `Have I had visions? Was I talking to
myself? What the

`Don't be alarmed,' said a voice.

`None of your ventriloquising me,' said Mr Thomas Marvel, rising sharply
to his feet. `Where are yer? Alarmed, indeed!'

`Don't be alarmed,' repeated the voice.

`You'll be alarmed in a minute, you silly fool,' said Mr Thomas Marvel.
`Where are yer? Lemme get my mark on yer

`Are you buried? ` said Mr Thomas Marvel, after an interval.

There was no answer. Mr Thomas Marvel stood bootless and amazed, his
jacket nearly thrown off.

`Peewit,' said a peewit, very remote.

`Peewit, indeed!' said Mr Thomas Marvel. `This ain't no time for foolery.'
The down was desolate, east and west, north and south; the road with its
shallow ditches and white bordering stakes, ran smooth and empty north
and south, and, save for that peewit, the blue sky was empty too. `So help
me,' said Mr Thomas Marvel, shuffling his coat on to his shoulders again.
`It's the drink! I might ha' known.

`It's not the drink,' said the voice. `You keep your nerves steady.'

`Ow!' said Mr Marvel, and his face grew white amidst its patches.
`It's the drink,' his lips repeated noiselessly. He remained staring
about him, rotating slowly backwards. `I could have swore I heard a
voice,' he whispered.

`Of course you did.'

`It's there again,' said Mr Marvel, closing his eyes and clasping his
hand on his brow with a tragic gesture. He was suddenly taken by the
collar and shaken violently and left more dazed than ever. `Don't be a
fool,' said the voice.

`I'm-off-my-blooming-chump,' said Mr Marvel. `It's no good. It's fretting
about them blarsted boots. I'm off my blessed blooming chump. Or it's
spirits.'

`Neither one thing nor the other,' said the voice. `Listen!'

`Chump,' said Mr Marvel.

`One minute,' said the voice penetratingly, -- tremulous with
self-control.

`Well?' said Mr Thomas Marvel, with a strange feeling of having been
dug in the chest by a finger.

`You think I'm just imagination? Just imagination?'

`What else can you be?' said Mr Thomas Marvel, rubbing the back of
his neck.

`Very well,' said the voice, in a tone of relief. `Then I'm going to
throw flints at you till you think differently.'

`But where are yer?'

The voice made no answer. Whiz came a flint, apparently out of the air,
and missed Mr Marvel's shoulder by a hair's breadth. Mr Marvel, turning,
saw a flint jerk up into the air, trace a complicated path, hang for
a moment, and then fling at his feet with almost invisible rapidity.
He was too amazed to dodge. Whiz it came, and ricocheted from a bare
toe into the ditch. Mr Thomas Marvel jumped a foot and howled aloud.
Then he started to run, tripped over an unseen obstacle, and came head
over heels into a sitting position.

`Now,' said the voice, as a third stone curved upward and hung in the
air above the tramp. `Am I imagination?'

Mr Marvel by way of reply struggled to his feet, and was immediately
rolled over again. He lay quiet for a moment. `If you struggle any more,'
said the voice, `I shall throw the flint at your head.'

`It's a fair do,' said Mr Thomas Marvel, sitting up, taking his wounded
toe in hand and fixing his eye on the third missile. `I don't understand
it. Stones flinging themselves. Stones talking. Put yourself down.
Rot away. I'm done.'

The third flint fell.

`It's very simple,' said the voice. `I'm an invisible man.

`Tell us something I don't know,' said Mr Marvel, gasping with pain.
`Where you've hid -- how you do it -- I don't know, I'm beat.'

`That's all,' said the voice. `I'm invisible. That's what I want you
to understand.'

`Any one could see that. There is no need for you to be so confounded
impatient, mister. Now then. Give us a notion. How are you hid?'

`I'm invisible. That's the great point. And what I want you to understand
is this

`But whereabouts?' interrupted Mr Marvel.

`Here! Six yards in front of you.'

`Oh, come! I ain't blind. You'll be telling me next you're just thin air.
I'm not one of your ignorant tramps

`Yes, I am -- thin air. You're looking through me.'

`What! Ain't there any stuff to you? Vox et -- what is it? -- jabber.
Is it that?'

`I am just a human being -- solid, needing food and drink, needing
covering too -- But I'm invisible. You see? Invisible. Simple idea.
Invisible.'

`What, real like?'

`Yes, real.'

`Let's have a hand of you,' said Marvel, `if you are real. It won't be so
darn out-of-the-way like, then -- Lord!' he said, `how you made me jump!
-- gripping me like that!'

He felt the hand that had closed round his wrist with his disengaged
fingers, and his touch went timorously up the arm, patted a muscular
chest, and explored a bearded face. Marvel's face was astonishment.

`I'm dashed!' he said.  `If this don't beat cock-fighting!  Most
remarkable! -- And there I can see a rabbit clean through you, 'arf a
mile away! Not a bit of you visible -- except -- '

He scrutinised the apparently empty space keenly. `You 'aven't been eatin'
bread and cheese?' he asked, holding the invisible arm.

`You're quite right, and it's not quite assimilated into the system.

`Ah!' said Mr Marvel. `Sort of ghostly, though.'

`Of course, all this isn't so wonderful as you think.'

`It's quite wonderful enough for my modest wants,' said Mr Thomas Marvel.
`Howjer manage it? How the dooce is it done?'

`It's too long a story. And besides -- '

`I tell you, the whole business fair beats me,' said Mr Marvel.

`What I want to say at present is this: I need help. I have come to
that -- I came upon you suddenly. I was wandering, mad with rage, naked,
impotent. I could have murdered. And I saw you -- '

`Lord!' said Mr Marvel.

`I came up behind you -- hesitated -- went on -- '

Mr Marvel's expression was eloquent.

` -- then stopped. "Here," I said. "is an outcast like myself. This is
the man for me." So I turned back and came to you -- you. And -- '

`Lord!' said Mr Marvel. `But I'm all in a tizzy. May I ask -- How is it?
And what you may be requiring in the way of help? -- Invisible!'

`I want you to help me get clothes -- and shelter -- and then, with
other things. I've left them long enough. If you won't -- well! But you
will -- must.

`Look here,' said Mr Marvel. `I'm too flabbergasted. Don't knock me about
any more. And leave me go. I must get steady a bit. And you've pretty
near broken my toe. It's all so unreasonable. Empty downs, empty sky.
Nothing visible for miles except the bosom of Nature. And then comes
a voice. A voice out of heaven! And stones! And a fist -- Lord!'

`Pull yourself together,' said the voice, `for you have to do the job
I've chosen for you.'

Mr Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round.

`I've chosen you,' said the voice. `You are the only man, except some of
those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible
man. You have to be my helper. Help me -- and I will do great things
for you. An invisible man is a man of power.' He stopped for a moment
to sneeze violently.

`But if you betray me,' he said, `if you fail to do as I direct you -- '

He paused and tapped Mr Marvel's shoulder smartly. Mr Marvel gave a yelp
of terror at the touch. `I don't want to betray you, said Mr Marvel,
edging away from the direction of the fingers. `Don't you go a-thinking
that, whatever you do. All I want to do is to help you -- just tell me
what I got to do. (Lord!) Whatever you want done, that I'm most willing
to do.'



CHAPTER 10

MR MARVEL'S VISIT TO IPING


After the first gusty panic had spent itself Iping became argumentative.
Scepticism suddenly reared its head -- rather nervous scepticism,
not at all assured of its back, but scepticism nevertheless. It is
so much easier not to believe in an invisible man; and those who had
actually seen him dissolve into air, or felt the strength of his arm,
could be counted on the fingers of two hands. And of these witnesses Mr
Wadgers was presently missing, having retired impregnably behind the
bolts and bars of his own house, and Jaffers was lying stunned in the
parlour of the Coach and Horses. Great and strange ideas transcending
experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more
tangible considerations. Iping was gay with bunting, and everybody was in
gala dress. Whit-Monday had been looked forward to for a month or more.
By the afternoon even those who believed in the Unseen were beginning to
resume their little amusements in a tentative fashion, on the supposition
that he had quite gone away, and with the sceptics he was already a jest.
But people, sceptics and believers alike, were remarkably sociable all
that day.

Haysman's meadow was gay with a tent, in which Mrs Bunting and other
ladies were preparing tea, while, without, the Sunday-school children
ran races and played games under the noisy guidance of the curate and
the Misses Cuss and Sackbut. No doubt there was a slight uneasiness in
the air, but people for the most part had the sense to conceal whatever
imaginative qualms they experienced. On the village green an inclined
string, down which, clinging the while to a pulley-swung handle, one
could be hurled violently against a sack at the other end, came in for
considerable favour among the adolescent. There were swings and cocoanut
shies and promenading, and the steam organ attached to the swings filled
the air with a pungent flavour of oil and with equally pungent music.
Members of the Club, who had attended church in the morning, were splendid
in badges of pink and green, and some of the gayer-minded had also adorned
their bowler hats with brilliant-coloured favours of ribbon. Old Fletcher,
whose conceptions of holiday-making were severe,was visible through the
jasmine about his window or through the open door (whichever way you
chose to look), poised delicately on a plank supported on two chairs,
and whitewashing the ceiling of his front room.

About four o'clock a stranger entered the village from the direction
of the downs. He was a short, stout person in an extraordinarily shabby
top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. His cheeks were
alternately limp and tightly puffed. His mottled face was apprehensive,
and he moved with a sort of reluctant alacrity. He turned the corner by
the church, and directed his way to the Coach and Horses. Among others
old Fletcher remembers seeing him, and indeed the old gentleman was
so struck by his peculiar agitation that he inadvertently allowed a
quantity of whitewash to run down the brush into the sleeve of his coat
while regarding him.

This stranger, to the perceptions of the proprietor of the cocoanut shy,
appeared to be talking to himself, and Mr Huxter remarked the same thing.
He stopped at the foot of the Coach and Horses steps, and, according
to Mr Huxter, appeared to undergo a severe internal struggle before
he could induce himself to enter the house. Finally he marched up the
steps, and was seen by Mr Huxter to turn to the left and open the door
of the parlour. Mr Huxter heard voices from within the room and from the
bar apprising the man of his error. `That room's private!' said Hall,
and the stranger shut the door clumsily and went into the bar.

In the course of a few minutes he reappeared, wiping his lips with the
back of his hand with an air of quiet satisfaction that somehow impressed
Mr Huxter as assumed. He stood looking about him for some moments,
and then Mr Huxter saw him walk in an oddly furtive manner towards the
gates of the yard, upon which the parlour window opened. The stranger,
after some hesitation, leant against one of the gate-posts, produced
a short clay pipe, and prepared to fill it. His fingers trembled while
doing so. He lit it clumsily, and folding his arms began to smoke in a
languid attitude, an attitude which his occasional quick glances up the
yard altogether belied.

All this Mr Huxter saw over the canisters of the tobacco window, and
the singularity of the man's behaviour prompted him to maintain his
observation.

Presently the stranger stood up abruptly and put his pipe in his pocket.
Then he vanished into the yard. Forthwith Mr Huxter, conceiving he was
witness of some petty larceny, leapt round his counter and ran out into
the road to intercept the thief. As he did so, Mr Marvel reappeared,
his hat askew, a big bundle in a blue table-cloth in one hand, and three
books tied together -- as it proved afterwards with the Vicar's braces
-- in the other. Directly he saw Huxter he gave a sort of ggasp, and
turning sharply to the left, began to run. `Stop thief!' cried Huxter,
and set off after him. Mr Huxter's sensations were vivid but brief.
He saw the man just before him and spurting briskly for the church corner
and the hill road. He saw the village flags and festivities beyond,
and a face or so turned towards him. He bawled, `Stop!' again. He had
hardly gone ten strides before his shin was caught in some mysterious
fashion, and he was no longer running, but flying with inconceivable
rapidity through the air. He saw the ground suddenly close to his face.
The world seemed to splash into a million whirling specks of light,
and subsequent proceedings interested him no more.



CHAPTER 11

IN THE COACH AND HORSES


Now in order clearly to understand what had happened in the inn, it is
necessary to go back to the moment when Mr Marvel first came into view
of Mr Huxter's window. At that precise moment Mr Cuss and Mr Bunting
were in the parlour. They were seriously investigating the strange
occurrences of the morning, and were, with Mr Hall's permission, making
a thorough examination of the Invisible Man's belongings. Jaffers had
partially recovered from his fall and had gone home in the charge of his
sympathetic friends. The stranger's scattered garments had been removed
by Mrs Hall and the room tidied up. And on the table under the window
where the stranger had been wont to work, Cuss had hit almost at once
on three big books in manuscript labelled `Diary.'

`Diary!' said Cuss, putting the three books on the table. `Now, at
any rate, we shall learn something.' The Vicar stood with his hands on
the table.

`Diary,' repeated Cuss, sitting down, putting two volumes to support the
third, and opening it. `H'm -- no name on the flyleaf. Bother! -- cypher.
And figures.'

The Vicar came round to look over his shoulder.

Cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly disappointed. `I'm -
dear me! It's all cypher, Bunting.'

`There are no diagrams?' asked Mr Bunting. `No illustrations throwing
light

`See for yourself,' said Mr Cuss. `Some of it's mathematical and some
of it's Russian or some such language (to judge by the letters), and
some of it's Greek. Now the Greek I thought you

`Of course,' said Mr Bunting, taking out and wiping his spectacles and
feeling suddenly very uncomfortable, -- for he had no Greek left in
his mind worth talking about; `yes -- the Greek, of course, may furnish
a clue.'

`I'll find you a place.

`I'd rather glance through the volumes first,' said Mr Bunting, still
wiping. `A general impression first, Cuss, and then, you know, we can
go looking for clues.'

He coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed again,
and wished something would happen to avert the seemingly inevitable
exposure. Then he took the volume Cuss handed him in a leisurely manner.
And then something did happen.

The door opened suddenly.

Both gentlemen started violently, looked round, and were relieved to
see stood staring.

`No,' said both gentlemen at once.

`Over the other side, my man,' said Mr Bunting. And `Please shut that
door,' said Mr Cuss irritably.

`All right,' said the intruder, as it seemed in a low voice curiously
different from the huskiness of its first enquiry. `Right you are,'
said the intruder in the former voice. `Stand clear!' and he vanished
and closed the door.

`A sailor, I should judge,' said Mr Bunting. `Amusing fellows they are.
Stand clear! indeed. A nautical term referring to his getting back out
of the room, I suppose.'

`I daresay so,' said Cuss. `My nerves are all loose to-day. It quite
made me jump -- the door opening like that.'

Mr Bunting smiled as if he had not jumped. `And now,' he said with a sigh,
`these books.'

`One minute,' said Cuss, and went and locked the door. `Now I think we
are safe from interruption.'

Some one sniffed as he did so.

`One thing is indisputable,' said Bunting, drawing up a chair next to
that of Cuss. `There certainly have been very strange things happen
in Iping during the last few days -- very strange. I cannot of course
believe in this absurd invisibility story

`It's incredible,' said Cuss, ` -- incredible. But the fact remains that
I saw -- I certainly saw right down his sleeve -- '

`But did you -- are you sure? Suppose a mirror, for instance, -
hallucinations are so easily produced. I don't know if you have ever
seen a really good conjuror -- '

`I won't argue again,' said Cuss. `We've thrashed that out, Bunting.
And just now there's these books -- Ah! here's some of what I take to
be Greek! Greek letters certainly.'

He pointed to the middle of the page. Mr Bunting flushed slightly
and brought his face nearer, apparently finding some difficulty with
his glasses. Suddenly he became aware of a strange feeling at the nape
of his neck. He tried to raise his head, and encountered an immovable
resistance. The feeling was a curious pressure, the grip of a heavy,
firm hand, and it bore his chin irresistibly to the table. `Don't move,
little men,' whispered a voice, `or I'll brain you both!' He looked into
the face of Cuss, close to his own, and each saw a horrified reflection
of his own sickly astonishment.

`I'm sorry to handle you roughly,' said the Voice, `but it's unavoidable.

`Since when did you learn to pry into an investigator's private
memoranda?' said the Voice; and two chins struck the table simultaneously,
and two sets of teeth rattled.

`Since when did you learn to invade the private rooms of a man in
misfortune?' and the concussion was repeated.

`Where have they put my clothes?

`Listen,' said the Voice. `The windows are fastened and I've taken the key
out of the door. I am a fairly strong man, and I have the poker handy -
besides being invisible. There's not the slightest doubt that I could kill
you both and get away quite easily if I wanted to -- do you understand?
Very well. If I let you go will you promise not to try any nonsense and
do what I tell you?'

The Vicar and the Doctor looked at one another, and the Doctor pulled
a face. `Yes,' said Mr Bunting, and the Doctor repeated it. Then the
pressure on the necks relaxed, and the Doctor and the Vicar sat up,
both very red in the face and wriggling their heads.

`Please keep sitting where you are, said the Invisible Man. `Here's the
poker, you see.

`When I came into this room,' continued the Invisible Man, after
presenting the poker to the tip of the nose of each of his visitors,
`I did not expect to find it occupied, and I expected to find, in
addition to my books of memoranda, an outfit of clothing. Where is it?
No, -- don't rise. I can see it's gone. Now, just at present, though
the days are quite warm enough for an invisible man to run about stark,
the evenings are chilly. I want clothing -- and other accommodation;
and I must also have those three books.'



CHAPTER 12

THE INVISIBLE MAN LOSES HIS TEMPER


It is unavoidable that at this point the narrative should break off
again, for a certain very painful reason that will presently be apparent.
While these things were going on in the parlour, and while Mr Huxter
was watching Mr Marvel smoking his pipe against the gate, not a dozen
yards away were Mr Hall and Teddy Henfrey discussing in a state of cloudy
puzzlement the one Iping topic.

Suddenly there came a violent thud against the door of the parlour,
a sharp cry, and then -- silence.

`Hul-lo!' said Teddy Henfrey.

`Hul-lo!' from the Tap.

Mr Hall took things in slowly but surely. `That ain't right,' he said,
and came round from behind the bar towards the parlour door.

He and Teddy approached the door together, with intent faces. Their eyes
considered. `Summat wrong,' said Hall, and Henfrey nodded agreement.
Whiffs of an unpleasant chemical odour met them and there was a muffled
sound of conversation very rapid and subdued.

`You all raight thur?' asked Hall, rapping.

The muttered conversation ceased abruptly, for a moment silence, then the
conversation was resumed in hissing whispers, then a sharp cry of `No!
no, you don't!' There came a sudden motion and the oversetting of a chair,
a brief struggle. Silence again.

`What the dooce?' exclaimed Henfrey, sotto voce.

`You-all-raight-thur?' asked Mr Hall sharply, again.

The Vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation: `Quite
ri- ight. Please don't -- interrupt.'

`Odd!' said Mr Henfrey.

`Odd!' said Mr Hall.

`Says. "Don't interrupt,"' said Henfrey.

`I heerd'n,' said Hall.

`And a sniff,' said Henfrey.

They remained listening. The conversation was rapid and subdued.
`I can't,' said Mr Bunting, his voice rising; `I tell you, sir, I
will not.'

`What was that?' asked Henfrey.

`Says he wi' nart,' said Hall. `Warn't speakin' to us, wuz he?'

`Disgraceful!' said Mr Bunting, within.

`"Disgraceful,"' said Mr Henfrey. `I heard it -- distinct.'

`Who's that speaking now?' asked Henfrey.

`Mr Cuss, I s'pose,' said Hall. `Can you hear -- anything?'

Silence. The sounds within indistinct and perplexing.

`Sounds like throwing the table-cloth about,' said Hall.

Mrs Hall appeared behind the bar. Hall made gestures of silence and
invitation. This roused Mrs Hall's wifely opposition. `What yer listenin'
there for, Hall?' she asked. `Ain't you nothin' better to do -- busy
day like this?'

Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs
Hall was obdurate. She raised her voice. So Hall and Henfrey, rather
crestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to her.

At first she refused to see anything in what they had heard at all.
Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence, while Henfrey told her his
story. She was inclined to think the whole business nonsense -- perhaps
they were just moving the furniture about. `I heer'n say "disgraceful";
that I did,' said Hall.

`I heerd that, Mis' Hall,' said Henfrey.

`Like as not -- ' began Mrs Hall.

`Hsh!' said Mr Teddy Henfrey. `Didn't I hear the window?'

`What window?' asked Mrs Hall.

`Parlour window,' said Henfrey.

Everyone stood listening intently. Mrs Hall's eyes, directed straight
before her, saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of the inn door, the
road white and vivid, and Huxter's shop-front blistering in the June sun.
Abruptly Huxter's door opened and Huxter appeared, eyes staring with
excitement, arms gesticulating. `Yap!' cried Huxter. `Stop thief!' and
he ran obliquely across the oblong towards the yard gates, and vanished.

Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour, and a sound of windows
being closed.

Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the Tap rushed out at once
pell-mell into the street. They saw some one whisk round the corner
towards the down road, and Mr Huxter executing a complicated leap in
the air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street people were
standing astonished or running towards them.

Mr Huxter was stunned. Henfrey stopped to discover this, but Hall and
the two labourers from the Tap rushed at once to the corner, shouting
incoherent things, and saw Mr Marvel vanishing by the corner of the
church wall. They appear to have jumped to the impossible conclusion that
this was the Invisible Man suddenly become visible, and set off at once
along the lane in pursuit. But Hall had hardly run a dozen yards before
he gave a loud shout of astonishment and went flying headlong sideways,
clutching one of the labourers and bringing him to the ground. He had been
charged just as one charges a man at football. The second labourer came
round in a circle, stared, and conceiving that Hall had tumbled over of
his own accord, turned to resume the pursuit, only to be tripped by the
ankle just as Huxter had been. Then, as the first labourer struggled to
his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blow that might have felled an ox.

As he went down, the rush from the direction of the village green
came round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor of the
cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. He was astonished to see
the lane empty save for three men sprawling absurdly on the ground.
And then something happened to his rear-most foot, and he went headlong
and rolled sidewavs just in time to graze the feet of his brother and
partner, following headlong. The two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen
over, and cursed by quite a number of over-hasty people.

Now when Hall and Henfrey and the labourers ran out of the house,
Mrs Hall, who had been disciplined by years of experience, remained in
the bar next the till. And suddenly the parlour door was opened, and Mr
Cuss appeared, and without glancing at her rushed at once down the steps
towards the corner. `Hold him!' he cried. `Don't let him drop that parcel!
You can see him so long as he holds the parcel.' He knew nothing of the
existence of Marvel. For the Invisible Man had handed over the books and
bundle in the yard. The face of Mr Cuss was angry and resolute, but his
costume was defective, a sort of limp white kilt that could only have
passed muster in Greece. Hold him!' he bawled. `He's got my trousers!
And every stitch of the Vicar's clothes!

`'Tend to him in a minute!' he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate
Huxter, and coming round the corner to join the tumult, was promptly
knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody in full flight
trod heavily on his fingers. He yelled, struggled to regain his feet,
was knocked against and thrown on all fours again, and became aware
that he was involved not in a capture, but a rout. Every one was running
back to the village. He rose again and was hit severely behind the ear.
He staggered and set off back to the Coach and Horses forthwith, leaping
over the deserted Huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way.

Behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps he heard a sudden yell of
rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries, and a sounding smack
in some one's face. He recognised the voice as that of the Invisible Man,
and the note was that of a man suddenly infuriated by a painful blow.

In another moment Mr Cuss was back in the parlour. `He's coming back,
Bunting!' he said, rushing in. `Save yourself! He's gone mad!'

Mr Bunting was standing in the window engaged in an attempt to clothe
himself in the hearth-rug and a West Surrey Gazette. `Who's coming?'
he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escaped disintegration.

`Invisible Man,' said Cuss, and rushed to the window. `We'd better clear
out from here! He's fighting mad! Mad!'

In another moment he was out in the yard.

`Good heavens!' said Mr Bunting, hesitating between two horrible
alternatives. He heard a frightful struggle in the passage of the inn,
and his decision was made. He clambered out of the window, adjusted his
costume hastily, and fled up the village as fast as his fat little legs
would carry him.

From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed with rage and Mr Bunting
made his memorable flight up the village, it became impossible to give
a consecutive account of affairs in Iping. Possibly the Invisible Man's
original intention was simply to cover Marvel's retreat with the clothes
and books. But his temper, at no time very good, seems to have gone
completely at some chance blow, and forthwith he set to smiting and
overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting.

You must figure the street full of running figures, of doors slamming and
fights for hiding-places. You must figure the tumult suddenly striking
on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher's planks and two chairs,
-- with cataclysmal results. You must figure an appalled coouple caught
dismally in a swing. And then the whole tumultuous rush has passed and
the Iping streets with its gauds and flags is deserted save for the still
raging Unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens,
and the scattered stock in trade of a sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there
is a sound of closing shutters and shoving bolts, and the only visible
humanity is an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the
corner of a window pane.

The Invisible Man amused himself for a little while by breaking all
the windows in the Coach and Horses, and then he thrust a street lamp
through the parlour window of Mrs Gribble. He it must have been who
cut the telegraph wire to Adderdean just beyond Higgins' cottage on
the Adderdean road. And after that, as his peculiar qualities allowed,
he passed out of human perceptions altogether, and he was neither heard,
seen, nor felt in Iping any more. He vanished absolutely.

But it was the best part of two hours before any human being ventured
out again into the desolation of Iping Street.



CHAPTER 13

MR MARVEL DISCUSSES HIS RESIGNATION


When the dusk was gathering and Iping was just beginning to peep
timorously forth again upon the shattered wreckage of its Bank Holiday,
a short, thick-set man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully
through the twilight behind the beechwoods on the road to Bramblehurst.
He carried three books bound together by some sort of ornamental elastic
ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue table-cloth. His rubicund face
expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic
sort of hurry. He was accompanied by a Voice other than his own, and
ever and again he winced under the touch of unseen hands.

`If you give me the slip again,' said the Voice; `if you attempt to give
me the slip again

`Lord!' said Mr Marvel. `That shoulder's a mass of bruises as it is.'
-- on my honour,' said the Voice, `I will kill you.'

`I didn't try to give you the slip,' said Marvel, in a voice that was
not far remote from tears. `I swear I didn't. I didn't know the blessed
turning, that was all! How the devil was I to know the blessed turning?
As it is, I've been knocked about -- '

`You'll get knocked about a great deal more if you don't mind,' said
the Voice, and Mr Marvel abruptly became silent. He blew out his cheeks,
and his eyes were eloquent of despair.

`It's bad enough to let these floundering yokels explode my little secret,
without your cutting off with my books. It's lucky for some of them they
cut and ran when they did! Here am I -- No one knew I was invisible!
And now what am I to do?'

`What am I to do?' asked Marvel, sotto voce.

`It's all about. It will be in the papers! Everybody will be looking for
me; everyone on their guard -- ' The Voice broke off into vivid curses
and ceased.

The despair of Mr Marvel's face deepened, and his pace slacked.

`Go on!' said the Voice.

Mr Marvel's face assumed a greyish tint between the ruddier patches.

`Don't drop those books, stupid,' said the Voice, sharply -- overtaking
him.

`The fact is,' said the Voice, `I shall have to make use of you. You're a
poor tool, but I must.

`I'm a miserable tool,' said Marvel.

`You are,' said the Voice.

`I'm the worst possible tool you could have,' said Marvel.

`I'm not strong,' he said after a discouraging silence.

`I'm not over strong,' he repeated.

`No?'

`And my heart's weak. That little business -- I pulled it through,
of course -- but bless you! I could have dropped.'

`Well?'

`I haven't the nerve and strength for the sort of thing you want.'

`I'll stimulate you.'

`I wish you wouldn't. I wouldn't like to mess up your plans, you know.
But I might, -- out of sheer funk and misery.

`You'd better not,' said the Voice, with quiet emphasis.

`I wish I was dead,' said Marvel.

`It ain't justice,' he said; `you must admit -- It seems to me I've a
perfect right

`Get on!' said the Voice.

Mr Marvel mended his pace, and for a time they went in silence again.

`It's devilish hard,' said Mr Marvel.

This was quite ineffectual. He tried another tack.

`What do I make by it?' he began again in a tone of unendurable wrong.

`Oh! shut up!' said the Voice, with sudden amazing vigour. `I'll see
to you all right. You do what you're told. You'll do it all right.
You're a fool and all that, but you'll do -- '

`I tell you, sir, I'm not the man for it. Respectfully -- but it is so
-- '

`If you don't shut up I shall twist your wrist again,' said the Invisible
Man. `I want to think.'

Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and
the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. `I shall keep
my hand on your shoulder,' said the Voice, `all through the village.
Go straight through and try no foolery. It will be the worse for you if
you do.'

`I know that,' sighed Mr Marvel, `I know all that.'

The unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the street
of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into the gathering
darkness beyond the lights of the windows.



CHAPTER 14

AT PORT STOWE


Ten o'clock the next morning found Mr Marvel, unshaven, dirty, and
travel-stained, sitting with the books beside him and his hands deep
in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous, and uncomfortable, and
inflating his cheeks at frequent intervals, on the bench outside a
little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe. Beside him were the books,
but now they were tied with string. The bundle had been abandoned in the
pinewoods beyond Bramblehurst, in accordance with a change in the plans
of the Invisible Man. Mr Marvel sat on the bench, and although no one
took the slightest notice of him, his agitation remained at fever heat.
His hands would go ever and again to his various pockets with a curious
nervous fumbling.

When he had been sitting for the best part of an hour, however, an
elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper, came out of the inn and sat down
beside him. `Pleasant day,' said the mariner.

Mr Marvel glanced about him with something very like terror. `Very,'
he said.

`Just seasonable weather for the time of year,' said the mariner, taking
no denial.

`Quite,' said Mr Marvel.

The mariner produced a toothpick, and (saving his regard) was engrossed
thereby for some minutes. His eyes meanwhile were at liberty to examine
Mr Marvel's dusty figure and the books beside him. As he had approached
Mr Marvel he had heard a sound like the dropping of coins into a pocket.
He was struck by the contrast of Mr Marvel's appearance with this
suggestion of opulence. Thence his mind wandered back again to a topic
that had taken a curiously firm hold of his imagination.

`Books?' he said suddenly, noisily finishing with the toothpick.

Mr Marvel started and looked at them. `Oh, yes,' he said. `Yes, they're
books.'

`There's some extra-ordinary things in books,' said the mariner.

`I believe you,' said Mr Marvel.

`And some extra-ordinary things out of 'em,' said the mariner.

`True likewise,' said Mr Marvel. He eyed his interlocutor, and then
glanced about him.

`There's some extra-ordinary things in newspapers, for example,' said
the mariner.

`There are.'

`In this newspaper,' said the mariner.

`Ah!' said Mr Marvel.

`There's a story,' said the mariner, fixing Mr Marvel with an eye
that was firm and deliberate; `there's a story about an Invisible Man,
for instance.

Mr Marvel pulled his mouth askew and scratched his cheek and felt
his ears glowing. `What will they be writing next?' he asked faintly.
`Ostria, or America?'

`Neither,' said the mariner. `Here!'

`Lord!' said Mr Marvel, starting.

`When I say here,' said the mariner, to Mr Marvel's intense relief,
`I don't of course mean here in this place, I mean hereabouts.

`An Invisible Man!' said Mr Marvel. `And what's he been up to?'

`Everything,' said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and
then amplifying: `Every Blessed Thing.'

`I ain't seen a paper these four days,' said Marvel.

`Iping's the place he started at,' said the mariner.

`In-deed!' said Mr Marvel.

`He started there. And where he came from, nobody don't seem to know.
Here it is: Pe Culiar Story from Iping. And it says in this paper that
the evidence is extra-ordinary strong -- extra-ordinary.'

`Lord!' said Mr Marvel.

`But then, it's an extra-ordinary story. There is a clergyman and a
medical gent witness, -- saw 'im all right and proper -- or leastways,
didn't see 'im. He was staying, it says, at the Coach an' Horses,
and no one don't seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says,
aware of his misfortune, until in an Alteration in the inn, it says,
his bandages on his head was torn off. It was then ob-served that
his head was invisible. Attempts were At Once made to secure him, but
casting off his garments, it says, he succeeded in escaping, but not
until after a desperate struggle, In Which he had inflicted serious
injuries, it says, on our worthy and able constable, Mr J. A. Jaffers.
Pretty straight story, eigh? Names and everything.'

`Lord!' said Mr Marvel, looking nervously about him, trying to count
the money in his pockets by his unaided sense of touch, and full of a
strange and novel idea. `It sounds most astonishing.'

`Don't it? Extra-ordinary, I call it. Never heard tell of Invisible Men
before, I haven't, but nowadays one hears such a lot of extra-ordinary
things -- that

`That all he did?' asked Marvel, trying to seem at his ease.

`It's enough, ain't it?' said the mariner.

`Didn't go back by any chance?' asked Marvel. `Just escaped and that's
all, eh?'

`All!' said the mariner. `Why! -- ain't it enough?'

`Quite enough,' said Marvel.

`I should think it was enough,' said the mariner. `I should think it
was enough.'

`He didn't have any pals -- it don't say he had any pals, does it?'
asked Mr Marvel, anxious.

`Ain't one of a sort enough for you?' asked the mariner. `No, thank
Heaven, as one might say, he didn't.'

He nodded his head slowly. `It makes me regular uncomfortable, the bare
thought of that chap running about the country! He is at present At Large,
and from certain evidence it is supposed that he has -- taken -- took,
I suppose they mean -- the road to Port Stowe. You see we're right in it!
None of your American wonders, this time. And just think of the things
he might do! Where'd you be, if he took a drop over and above, and had
a fancy to go for you? Suppose he wants to rob -- who can prevent him?
He can trespass, he can burgle, he could walk through a cordon of
policemen as easy as me or you could give the slip to a blind man! Easier!
For these here blind chaps hear uncommon sharp, I'm told. And wherever
there was liquor he fancied

`He's got a tremenjous advantage, certainly,' said Marvel. `And -- well.'

`You're right,' said the mariner. `He has.'

All this time Mr Marvel had been glancing about him intently, listening
for faint footfalls, trying to detect imperceptible movements. He seemed
on the point of some great resolution. He coughed behind his hand.

He looked about him again, listened, bent towards the mariner, and
lowered his voice: `The fact of it is -- I happen -- to know just a
thing or two about this Invisible Man. From private sources.'

`Oh!' said the mariner, interested. `You?'

`Yes,' said Mr Marvel. `Me.'

`Indeed!' said the mariner. `And may I ask -- '

`You'll be astonished,' said Mr Marvel behind his hand. `It's tremenjous.'

`Indeed!' said the mariner.

`The fact is,' began Mr Marvel eagerly in a confidential undertone.
Suddenly his expression changed marvellously. `Ow!' he said. He rose
stiffly in his seat. His face was eloquent of physical suffering. `Wow!'
he said.

`What's up?' said the mariner, concerned.

`Toothache,' said Mr Marvel, and put his hand to his ear. He caught hold
of his books. `I must be getting on, I think,' he said. He edged in a
curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor. `But you was just
agoing to tell me about this here Invisible Man!' protested the mariner.
Mr Marvel seemed to consult with himself. `Hoax,' said a voice. `It's a
hoax,' said Mr Marvel.

`But it's in the paper,' said the mariner.

`Hoax all the same,' said Marvel. `I know the chap that started the lie.
There ain't no Invisible Man whatsoever -- Blimey.'

`But how 'bout this paper? D'you mean to say -- ?'

`Not a word of it,' said Marvel, stoutly.

The mariner stared, paper in hand. Mr Marvel jerkily faced about. `Wait a
bit,' said the mariner, rising and speaking slowly. `D'you mean to say
-- ?'

`I do,' said Mr Marvel.

`Then why did you let me go on and tell you all this blarsted stuff, then?
What d'yer mean by letting a man make a fool of himself like that for?
Eigh?'

Mr Marvel blew out his cheeks. The mariner was suddenly very red indeed;
he clenched his hands. `I been talking here this ten minutes,' he said;
`and you, you little pot-bellied, leathery-faced son of an old boot,
couldn't have the elementary manners -- '

`Don't you come bandying words with me,' said Mr Marvel.

`Bandying words! I'm a jolly good mind

`Come up,' said a voice, and Mr Marvel was suddenly whirled about
and started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner. `You'd better
move on,' said the mariner. `Who's moving on?' said Mr Marvel. He was
receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent
jerks forward. Some way along the road he began a muttered monologue,
protests and recriminations.

`Silly devil!' said the mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching
the receding figure. `I'll show you, you silly ass, -- hoaxing me!
It's here -- on the paper!'

Mr Marvel retorted incoherently and, receding, was hidden by a bend in the
road, but the mariner still stood magnificent in the midst of the way,
until the approach of a butcher's cart dislodged him. Then he turned
himself towards Port Stowe. `Full of extra-ordinary asses,' he said
softly to himself. `Just to take me down a bit -- that was his silly
game -- It's on the paper!'

And there was another extraordinary thing he was presently to hear,
that had happened quite close to him. And that was a vision of a `fist
full of money' (no less) travelling without visible agency, along by
the wall at the corner of St Michael's Lane. A brother mariner had seen
this wonderful sight that very morning. He had snatched at the money
forthwith and had been knocked headlong, and when he had got to his feet
the butterfly money had vanished. Our mariner was in the mood to believe
anything, he declared, but that was a bit too stiff. Afterwards, however,
he began to think things over.

The story of the flying money was true. And all about that neigh-
bourhood, even from the august London and Country Banking Company,
from the tills of shops and inns -- doors standing that sunny weather
entirely open -- money had been quietly and dexterously making off that
day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady
places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men. And it had,
though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in
the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk hat, sitting
outside the little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe.



CHAPTER 15

THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING


In the early evening time Doctor Kemp was sitting in his study in the
belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room,
with three windows, north, west, and south, and bookshelves crowded
with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and,
under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments,
some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Doctor Kemp's solar
lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and
his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to
require them pulled down. Doctor Kemp was a tall and slender young man,
with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon
would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly
did he think of it.

And his eye presently wandering from his work caught the sunset blazing at
the back of the hill that is over against his own. For a minute perhaps
he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour above the crest,
and then his attention was attracted by the little figure of a man,
inky black, running over the hill-brow towards him. He was a shortish
little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his
legs verily twinkled.

`Another of those fools,' said Doctor Kemp. `Like that ass who ran into
me this morning round a corner, with his "'Visible Man a-coming, sir!"
I can't imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the
thirteenth century.'

He got up, went to the window, and stared at the dusky hillside and the
dark little figure tearing down it. `He seems in a confounded hurry,'
said Doctor Kemp, `but he doesn't seem to be getting on. If his pockets
were full of lead, he couldn't run heavier.

`Spurted, sir,' said Doctor Kemp.

In another moment the higher of the villas that had clambered up the
hill from Burdock had occulted the running figure. He was visible again
for a moment, and again, and then again, three times between the three
detached houses that came next, and then the terrace hid him.

`Asses!' said Doctor Kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking back
to his writing-table.

But those who saw the fugitive nearer, and perceived the abject terror
on his perspiring face, being themselves in the open roadway, did not
share in the doctor's contempt. By the man pounded, and as he ran he
chinked like a well-filled purse that is tossed to and fro. He looked
neither to the right nor the left, but his dilated eyes stared straight
downhill to where the lamps were being lit, and the people were crowding
in the street. And his ill- shaped mouth fell apart, and a glairy foam
lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and noisy. All he passed
stopped and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one
another with an inkling of discomfort for the reason of his haste.

And then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road yelped
and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered something -- a wind --
a pad, pad, pad, -- a sound like a panting breathing, -- rushed by.

People screamed. People sprang off the pavement. It passed in shouts,
it passed by instinct down the hill. They were shouting in the street
before Marvel was halfway there. They were bolting into houses and
slamming the doors behind them, with the news. He heard it and made
one last desperate spurt. Fear came striding by, rushed ahead of him,
and in a moment had seized the town.

`The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man.'



CHAPTER 16

IN THE JOLLY CRICKETERS


The Jolly Cricketers is just at the bottom of the hill, where the
tram-lines begin. The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter
and talked of horses with an anaemic cabman, while a black-bearded man
in grey snapped up biscuit and cheese, drank Burton, and conversed in
American with a policeman off duty.

`What's the shouting about?' said the anaemic cabman going off at a
tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind in the
low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside. `Fire, perhaps,' said
the barman.

Footsteps approached, running heavily, the door was pushed open violently,
and Marvel, weeping and dishevelled, his hat gone, the neck of his coat
torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn, and attempted to shut
the door. It was held half open by a strap.

`Coming!' he bawled, his voice shrieking with terror. `He's coming.
The `Visible Man! After me! For Gawd's sake! Elp! Elp! Elp!'

`Shut the doors,' said the policeman. `Who's coming? What's the row?'
He went to the door, released the strap, and it slammed. The American
closed the other door.

`Lemme go inside,' said Marvel, staggering and weeping, but still
clutching the books. `Lemme go inside. Lock me in -- somewhere. I tell
you he's after me. I give him the slip. He said he'd kill me and he will.'

`You're safe,' said the man with the black beard. `The door's shut.
What's it all about?'

`Lemme go inside,' said Marvel, and shrieked aloud as a blow suddenly
made the fastened door shiver and was followed by a hurried rapping
and a shouting outside. `Hullo,' cried the policeman, `who's there?'
Mr Marvel began to make frantic dives at panels that looked like doors.
`He'll kill me -- he's got a knife or something. For Gawd's sake!'

`Here you are,' said the barman. `Come in here.' And he held up the flap
of the bar.

Mr Marvel rushed behind the bar as the summons outside was repeated.
`Don't open the door,' he screamed. `Please don't open the door.
Where shall I hide?'

`This, this Invisible Man, then?' asked the man with the black beard,
with one hand behind him. `I guess it's about time we saw him.'

The window of the inn was suddenly smashed in, and there was a screaming
and running to and fro in the street. The policeman had been standing
on the settee staring out, craning to see who was at the door. He got
down with raised eyebrows. `It's that,' he said. The barman stood in
front of the bar-parlour door which was now locked on Mr Marvel, stared
at the smashed window and came round to the two other men.

Everything was suddenly quiet. `I wish I had my truncheon,' said the
policeman, going irresolutely to the door. `Once we open, in he comes.
There's no stopping him.'

`Don't you be in too much hurry about that door,' said the anaemic
cabman anxiously.

`Draw the bolts,' said the man with the black beard, `and if he comes -- '
He showed a revolver in his hand.

`That won't do,' said the policeman; `that's murder.'

`I know what country I'm in,' said the man with the beard. `I'm going
to let off at his legs. Draw the bolts.'

`Not with that thing going off behind me,' said the barman, craning over
the blind.

`Very well,' said the man with the black beard, and stooping down,
revolver ready, drew them himself. Barman, cabman, and policeman faced
about.

`Come in,' said the bearded man in an undertone, standing back and facing
the unbolted doors with his pistol behind him. No one came in, the door
remained closed. Five minutes afterwards when a second cabman pushed his
head in cautiously, they were still waiting, and an anxious face peered
out of the bar-parlour and supplied information. `Are all the doors
of the house shut?' asked Marvel. `He's going round -- prowling round.
He's as artful as the devil.'

`Good Lord!' said the burly barman. `There's the back! Just watch them
doors! I say! -- ' He looked about him helplessly. The bar-parlour door
slammed and they heard the key turn. `There's the yard door and the
private door. The yard door

He rushed out of the bar.

In a minute he reappeared with a carving-knife in his hand. `The yard
door was open!' he said, and his fat underlip dropped.

`He may be in the house now!' said the first cabman.

`He's not in the kitchen,' said the barman. `There's two women there,
and I've stabbed every inch of it with this little beef slicer. And they
don't think he's come in. They haven't noticed -- '

`Have you fastened it?' asked the first cabman.

`I'm out of frocks,' said the barman.

The man with the beard replaced his revolver. And even as he did so
the flap of the bar was shut down and the bolt clicked and then with
a tremendous thud the catch of the door snapped and the bar-parlour
door burst open. They heard Marvel squeal like a caught leveret, and
forthwith they were clambering over the bar to his rescue. The bearded
man's revolver cracked and the looking-glass at the back of the parlour
was starred brightly and came smashing and tinkling down.

As the barman entered the room he saw Marvel, curiously crumpled up and
struggling against the door that led to the yard and kitchen. The door
flew open while the barman hesitated, and Marvel was dragged into the
kitchen. There was a scream and a clatter of pans. Marvel, head down,
and lugging back obstinately, was forced to the kitchen door, and the
bolts were drawn.

Then the policeman, who had been trying to pass the barman, rushed in,
followed by one of the cabmen, gripped the wrist of the invisible hand
that collared Marvel, was hit in the face and went reeling back. The door
opened, and Marvel made a frantic effort to obtain a lodgment behind it.
Then the cabman clutched something. `I got him,' said the cabman.
The barman's red hands came clawing at the unseen. `Here he is!' said
the barman.

Mr Marvel, released, suddenly dropped to the ground and made an attempt
to crawl behind the legs of the fighting men. The struggle blundered
round the edge of the door. The voice of the Invisible Man was heard for
the first time, yelling out sharply, as the policeman trod on his foot.
Then he cried out passionately and his fists flew round like flails.
The cabman suddenly whooped and doubled up, kicked under the diaphragm.
The door into the bar-parlour from the kitchen slammed and covered Mr
Marvel's retreat. The men in the kitchen found themselves clutching at
and struggling with empty air.

`Where's he gone?' cried the man with the beard. `Out?'

`This way,' said the policeman, stepping into the yard and stopping.

A piece of tile whizzed by his head and smashed among the crockery on
the kitchen table.

`I'll show him,' shouted the man with the black beard, and suddenly a
steel barrel shone over the policeman's shoulder, and five bullets had
followed one another into the twilight whence the missile had come. As he
fired, the man with the beard moved his hand in a horizontal curve, so
that his shots radiated out into the narrow yard like spokes from a wheel.

A silence followed. `Five cartridges,' said the man with the black beard.
`That's the best of all. Four aces and the joker. Get a lantern, some one,
and come and feel about for his body.'



CHAPTER 17

DOCTOR KEMP'S VISITOR


Doctor Kemp had continued writing in his study until the shots aroused
him. Crack, crack, crack, they came one after the other.

`Hello!' said Doctor Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and
listening. `Who's letting off revolvers in Burdock? What are the asses
at now?'

He went to the south window, threw it up, and leaning out stared down on
the network of windows, beaded gas-lamps and shops with black interstices
of roof and yard that made up the town at night. `Looks like a crowd
down the hill,' he said, `by the Cricketers,' and remained watching.
Thence his eyes wandered over the town to far away where the ship's lights
shone, and the pier glowed, a little illuminated pavilion like a gem of
yellow light. The moon in its first quarter hung over the western hill,
and the stars were clear and almost tropically bright.

After five minutes, during which his mind had travelled into a remote
speculation of social conditions of the future, and lost itself at last
over the time dimension, Doctor Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled
down the window again, and returned to his writing-desk.

It must have been about an hour after this that the front-door bell rang.
He had been writing slackly and with intervals of abstraction, since
the shots. He sat listening. He heard the servant answer the door, and
waited for her feet on the staircase, but she did not come. Wonder what
that was,' said Doctor Kemp.

He tried to resume his work, failed, got up, went downstairs from
his study to the landing, rang, and called over the balustrade to
the housemaid as she appeared in the hall below. `Was that a letter?'
he asked.

`Only a runaway ring, sir,' she answered.

`I'm restless to-night,' he said to himself. He went back to his study,
and this time attacked his work resolutely. In a little while he was
hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of
the clock and the subdued shrillness of his quill, hurrying in the very
centre of the circle of light his lamp-shade threw on his table.

It was two o'clock before Doctor Kemp had finished his work for the night.
He rose, yawned, and went downstairs to bed. He had already removed his
coat and vest, when he noticed that he was thirsty. He took a candle
and went down to the dining-room in search of a siphon and whisky.

Doctor Kemp's scientific pursuits had made him a very observant man, and
as he recrossed the hall, he noticed a dark spot on the linoleum near the
mat at the foot of the stairs. He went on upstairs, and then it suddenly
occurred to him to ask himself what the spot on the linoleum might be.
Apparently some subconscious element was at work. At any rate, he turned
with his burden, went back to the hall, put down the siphon and whisky,
and bending down, touched the spot. Without any great surprise he found
it had the stickiness and colour of drying blood.

He took up his burden again, and returned upstairs, looking about him and
trying to account for the blood-spot. On the landing he saw something and
stopped astonished. The door-handle of his own room was blood- stained.

He looked at his own hand. It was quite clean, and then he remembered
that the door of his room had been open when he came down from his study,
and that consequently he had not touched the handle at all. He went
straight into his room, his face quite calm -- perhaps a trifle more
resolute than usual. His glance, wandering inquisitively, fell on the bed.
On the counterpane was a mess of blood, and the sheet had been torn.
He had not noticed this before because he had walked straight to the
dressing-table. On the further side the bed-clothes were depressed as
if some one had been recently sitting there.

Then he had an odd impression that he had heard a loud voice say,
`Good Heavens! -- Kemp!' But Doctor Kemp was no believer in Voices.

He stood staring at the tumbled sheets. Was that really a voice? He looked
about again, but noticed nothing further than the disordered and blood-
stained bed. Then he distinctly heard a movement across the room,
near the wash-hand stand. All men, however highly educated, retain some
superstitious inklings. The feeling that is called `eerie' came upon him.
He closed the door of the room, came forward to the dressing-table,
and put down his burdens. Suddenly, with a start, he perceived a coiled
and blood- stained bandage of linen rag hanging in mid-air, between him
and the wash- hand stand.

He stared at this in amazement. It was an empty bandage, a bandage
properly tied but quite empty. He would have advanced to grasp it,
but a touch arrested him, and a voice speaking quite close to him.

`Kemp!' said the Voice.

`Eigh?' said Kemp, with his mouth open.

`Keep your nerve,' said the Voice. `I'm an Invisible Man.'

Kemp made no answer for a space, simply stared at the bandage.
`Invisible Man,' he said.

`I'm an Invisible Man,' repeated the Voice.

The story he had been active to ridicule only that morning rushed through
Kemp's brain. He does not appear to have been either very much frightened
or very greatly surprised at the moment. Realisation came later.

`I thought it was all a lie,' he said. The thought uppermost in his mind
was the reiterated arguments of the morning. `Have you a bandage on?'
he asked.

`Yes,' said the Invisible Man.

`Oh!' said Kemp, and then roused himself. `I say!' he said. `But this
is nonsense. It's some trick.' He stepped forward suddenly, and his hand,
extended towards the bandage, met invisible fingers.

He recoiled at the touch and his colour changed.

`Keep steady, Kemp, for God's sake! I want help badly. Stop!'

The hand gripped his arm. He struck at it.

`Kemp!' cried the Voice. `Kemp! Keep steady!' and the grip tightened.

A frantic desire to free himself took possession of Kemp. The hand of the
bandaged arm gripped his shoulder, and he was suddenly tripped and flung
backwards upon the bed. He opened his mouth to shout, and the corner of
the sheet was thrust between his teeth. The Invisible Man had him down
grimly, but his arms were free and he struck and tried to kick savagely.

`Listen to reason, will you?' said the Invisible Man, sticking to him in
spite of a pounding in the ribs. `By heaven! you'll madden me in a minute?

`Lie still, you fool!' bawled the Invisible Man in Kemp's ear.

Kemp struggled for another moment and then lay still.

`If you shout I'll smash your face,' said the Invisible Man, relieving
his mouth.

`I'm an Invisible Man. It's no foolishness, and no magic. I really am an
Invisible Man. And I want your help. I don't want to hurt you, but if
you behave like a frantic rustic, I must. Don't you remember me, Kemp?
-- Griffin, of University College?'

`Let me get up,' said Kemp. `I'll stop where I am. And let me sit quiet
for a minute.

He sat up and felt his neck.

`I am Griffin, of University College, and I have made myself invisible.
I am just an ordinary man -- a man you have known -- made invisible.'

`Griffin?' said Kemp.

`Griffin,' answered the Voice -- `a younger student, almost an albino,
six feet high, and broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes --
who won the medal for chemistry.'

`I am confused,' said Kemp. `My brain is rioting. What has this to do
with Griffin?'

`I am Griffin.'

Kemp thought. `It's horrible,' he said. `But what devilry must happen
to make a man invisible?'

`It's no devilry. It's a process, sane and intelligible enough -- '

`It's horrible!' said Kemp. `How on earth -- ?'

`It's horrible enough. But I'm wounded and in pain, and tired -- Great
God! Kemp, you are a man. Take it steady. Give me some food and drink,
and let me sit down here.'

Kemp stared at the bandage as it moved across the room, then saw a
basket chair dragged across the floor and come to rest near the bed.
It creaked, and the seat was depressed the quarter of an inch or so.
He rubbed his eyes and felt his neck again. `This beats ghosts,' he said,
and laughed stupidly.

`That's better. Thank Heaven, you're getting sensible!'

`Or silly,' said Kemp, and knuckled his eyes.

`Give me some whisky. I'm near dead.'

`It didn't feel so. Where are you? If I get up shall I run into you?
There! all right. Whisky? Here. Where shall I give it you?'

The chair creaked and Kemp felt the glass drawn away from him. He let go
by an effort; his instinct was all against it. It came to rest poised
twenty inches above the front edge of the seat of the chair. He stared
at it in infinite perplexity. `This is -- this must be -- hypnotism.
You must have suggested you are invisible.'

`Nonsense,' said the Voice.

`It's frantic.'

`Listen to me.

`I demonstrated conclusively this morning,' began Kemp, `that invisibility

`Never mind what you've demonstrated! -- I'm starving,' said the Voice,
`and the night is -- chilly to a man without clothes.'

`Food!' said Kemp.

The tumbler of whisky tilted itself. `Yes,' said the Invisible Man,
rapping it down. `Have you got a dressing-gown?'

Kemp made some exclamation in an undertone.He walked to a wardrobe and
produced a robe of dingy scarlet. `This do?' he asked. It was taken
from him. It hung limp for a moment in mid-air, fluttered weirdly, stood
full and decorous buttoning itself, and sat down in his chair. `Drawers,
socks, slippers would be a comfort,' said the Unseen, curtly. `And food.'

`Anything. But this is the insanest thing I ever was in, in my life!'

He turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to
ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and bread, pulled
up a light table, and placed them before his guest. `Never mind knives,'
said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air, with a sound of gnawing.

`Invisible!' said Kemp, and sat down on a bedroom chair.

`I always like to get something about me before I eat,' said the Invisible
Man, with a full mouth, eating greedily. `Queer fancy!'

`I suppose that wrist is all right,' said Kemp.

`Trust me,' said the Invisible Man.

`Of all the strange and wonderful -- '

`Exactly. But it's odd I should blunder into your house to get my
bandaging. My first stroke of luck. Anyhow I meant to sleep in this house
to-night. You must stand that! It's a filthy nuisance, my blood showing,
isn't it? Quite a clot over there. Gets visible as it coagulates, I see.
I've been in the house three hours.'

`But how's it done?' began Kemp, in a tone of exasperation. `Confound it!
The whole business -- it's unreasonable from beginning to end.'

`Quite reasonable,' said the Invisible Man. `Perfectly reasonable.'

He reached over and secured the whisky bottle. Kemp stared at the
devouring dressing-gown. A ray of candle-light penetrating a torn patch
in the right shoulder, made a triangle of light under the left ribs.
`What were the shots?' he asked. `How did the shooting begin?'

`There was a fool of a man -- a sort of confederate of mine -- curse him!
-- who tried to steal my money. Has done so.'

`Is he invisible too?'

`No.'

`Well?'

`Can't I have some more to eat before I tell you all that? I'm hungry --
in pain. And you want me to tell stories!'

Kemp got up. `You didn't do any shooting?' he asked.

`Not me,' said his visitor. `Some fool I'd never seen fired at random.
A lot of them got scared. They all got scared at me. Curse them! --
I say -- I want more to eat than this, Kemp.'

`I'll see what there is more to eat downstairs,' said Kemp. `Not much,
I'm afraid.'

After he had done eating, and he made a heavy meal, the Invisible Man
demanded a cigar. He bit the end savagely before Kemp could find a
knife, and cursed when the outer leaf loosened. It was strange to see
him smoking; his mouth and throat, pharynx and nares, became visible as
a sort of whirling smoke cast.

`This blessed gift of smoking!' he said, and puffed vigorously. `I'm lucky
to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You must help me. Fancy tumbling on you
just now! I'm in a devilish scrape. I've been mad, I think. The things
I have been through! But we will do things yet. Let me tell you

He helped himself to more whisky and soda. Kemp got up, looked about
him, and fetched himself a glass from his spare room. `It's wild --
but I suppose I may drink.'

`You haven't changed much, Kemp, these dozen years. You fair men don't.
Cool and methodical -- after the first collapse. I must tell you.
We will work together!'

`But how was it all done?' said Kemp, `and how did you get like this?'

`For God's sake, let me smoke in peace for a little while! And then I
will begin to tell you.'

But the story was not told that night. The Invisible Man's wrist was
growing painful, he was feverish, exhausted, and his mind came round
to brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about the inn.
He spoke in fragments of Marvel, he smoked faster, his voice grew angry.
Kemp tried to gather what he could.

`He was afraid of me, I could see he was afraid of me,' said the Invisible
Man many times over. `He meant to give me the slip -- he was always
casting about! What a fool I was!

`The cur!

`I should have killed him

`Where did you get the money?' asked Kemp abruptly.

The Invisible Man was silent for a space. `I can't tell you to-night,'
he said.

He groaned suddenly and leant forward, supporting his invisible head on
invisible hands. `Kemp,' he said, `I've had no sleep for near three days -
except a couple of dozes of an hour or so. I must sleep soon.'

`Well, have my room -- have this room.'

`But how can I sleep? If I sleep -- he will get away. Ugh! What does
it matter?'

`What's the shot-wound?' asked Kemp, abruptly.

`Nothing -- scratch and blood. Oh, God! How I want sleep!'

`Why not?'

The Invisible Man appeared to be regarding Kemp. `Because I've a
particular objection to being caught by my fellow-men,' he said slowly.

Kemp started.

`Fool that I am!' said the Invisible Man, striking the table smartly.
`I've put the idea into your head.'



CHAPTER 18

THE INVISIBLE MAN SLEEPS


Exhausted and wounded as the Invisible Man was, he refused to accept
Kemp's word that his freedom should be respected. He examined the
two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds, and opened the sashes
to confirm Kemp's statement that a retreat by them would be possible.
Outside the night was very quiet and still, and the new moon was setting
over the down. Then he examined the keys of the bedroom and the two
dressing-room doors, to satisfy himself that these also could be made an
assurance of freedom. Finally he expressed himself satisfied. He stood
on the hearth-rug and Kemp heard the sound of a yawn.

`I'm sorry,' said the Invisible Man, `if I cannot tell you all that
I have done to-night. But I am worn out. It's grotesque, no doubt.
It's horrible! But believe me, Kemp, it is quite a possible thing.
I have made a discovery. I meant to keep it to myself. I can't. I must
have a partner. And you -- We can do such things -- But to-morrow. Now,
Kemp, I feel as though I must sleep or perish.'

Kemp stood in the middle of the room staring at the headless garment.
I suppose I must leave you,' he said. `It's -- incredible. Three things
happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions, would make
me insane. But it's real! Is there anything more that I can get you?'

`Only bid me good-night,' said Griffin.

`Good-night,' said Kemp, and shook an invisible hand. He walked sideways
to the door. Suddenly the dressing-gown walked quickly towards him.
`Understand me!' said the dressing-gown. `No attempts to hamper me,
or capture me! Or -- '

Kemp's face changed a little. `I thought I gave you my word,' he said.

Kemp closed the door softly behind him, and the key was turned upon him
forthwith. Then, as he stood with an expression of passive amazement on
his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the dressing-room and that
too was locked. Kemp slapped his brow with his hand. `Am I dreaming?
Has the world gone mad -- or have I?'

He laughed, and put his hand to the locked door. `Barred out of my own
bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!' he said.

He walked to the head of the staircase, turned, and stared at the
locked doors. `It's fact,' he said. He put his fingers to his slightly
bruised neck. `Undeniable fact!

`But -- '

He shook his head hopelessly, turned, and went downstairs.

He lit the dining-room lamp, got out a cigar, and began pacing the room,
ejaculating. Now and then he would argue with himself.

`Invisible!' he said.

`Is there such a thing as an invisible animal? In the sea, yes. Thousands!
millions! All the larvae, all the little nauplii and tornarias, all the
microscopic things, the jelly-fish. In the sea there are more things
invisible than visible! I never thought of that before. And in the
ponds too! All those little pond-life things -- specks of colourless
translucent jelly! But in air? No!

`It can't be.

`But after all -- why not?

`If a man was made of glass he would still be visible.'

His meditation became profound. The bulk of three cigars had passed
into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet before
he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside,
walked out of the room, and went into his little consulting-room and
lit the gas there. It was a little room, because Dr Kemp did not live
by practice, and in it were the day's newspapers. The morning's paper
lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. He caught it up, turned it over,
and read the account of a `Strange Story from Iping' that the Mariner at
Port Stowe had spelt over so painfully to Mr Marvel. Kemp read it swiftly.

`Wrapped up!' said Kemp. `Disguised! Hiding it! "No one seems to have
been aware of his misfortune." What the devil is his game?'

He dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking. `Ah!' he said, and caught
up the St James' Gazette, lying folded up as it arrived. `Now we shall get
at the truth,' said Dr Kemp. He rent the paper open; a couple of columns
confronted him. `An Entire Village in Sussex goes Mad' was the heading.

`Good Heavens!' said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the
events in Iping the previous afternoon, that have already been described.
Over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted.

He re-read it. `Ran through the streets striking right and left.
Jaffers insensible. Mr Huxter in great pain -- still unable to describe
what he saw. Painful humiliation -- vicar. Woman ill with terror!
Windows smashed. This extraordinary story probably a fabrication.
Too good not to print -- cum grano!'

He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him. `Probably a
fabrication!'

He caught up the paper again, and re-read the whole business. `But where
does the Tramp come in? Why the deuce was he chasing a Tramp?'

He sat down abruptly on the surgical couch. `He's not only invisible,'
he said, `but he's mad! Homicidal!'

When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar smoke
of the dining-room, Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying to grasp
the incredible.

He was altogether too excited to sleep. His servants, descending sleepily,
discovered him, and were inclined to think that over-study had worked this
ill on him. He gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions
to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere study -- and then to confine
themselves to the basement and ground-floor. Then he continued to pace
the dining-room until the morning's paper came. That had much to say
and little to tell, beyond the confirmation of the evening before and a
very badly written account of another remarkable tale from Port Burdock.
This gave Kemp the essence of the happenings at the Jolly Cricketers,
and the name of Marvel. `He has made me keep with him twenty-four hours,'
Marvel testified. Certain minor facts were added to the Iping story,
notably the cutting of the village telegraph-wire. But there was nothing
to throw light on the connection between the Invisible Man and the
Tramp; for Mr Marvel had supplied no information about the three books,
or the money with which he was lined. The incredulous tone had vanished
and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating
the matter.

Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get
every one of the morning papers she could. These also he devoured.

`He is invisible!' he said. `And it reads like rage growing to mania!
The things he may do! The things he may do! And he's upstairs free as
the air. What on earth ought I to do?

`For instance, would it be a breach of faith if -- ? No.'

He went to a little untidy desk in the corner, and began a note.
He tore this up half written, and wrote another. He read it over and
considered it. Then he took an envelope and addressed it to `Colonel Adye,
Port Burdock.'

The Invisible Man awoke even as Kemp was doing this. He awoke in an evil
temper, and Kemp, alert for every sound, heard his pattering feet rush
suddenly across the bedroom overhead. Then a chair was flung over and the
wash-hand stand tumbler smashed. Kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly.



CHAPTER 19

CERTAIN FIRST PRINCIPLES


`What's the matter?' asked Kemp, when the Invisible Man admitted him.

`Nothing,' was the answer.

`But, confound it! The smash?'

`Fit of temper,' said the Invisible Man. `Forgot this arm; and it's sore.'

`You're rather liable to that sort of thing.

`I am.'

Kemp walked across the room and picked up the fragments of broken glass.
`All the facts are out about you,' said Kemp, standing up with the glass
in his hand; `all that happened in Iping, and down the hill. The world
has become aware of its invisible citizen. But no one knows you are here.'

The Invisible Man swore.

`The secret's out. I gather it was a secret. I don't know what your
plans are, but of course I'm anxious to help you.'

The Invisible Man sat down on the bed.

`There's breakfast up stairs,' said Kemp, speaking as easily as possible,
and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose willingly. Kemp led
the way up the narrow staircase to the belvedere.

`Before we can do anything else,' said Kemp, `I must understand a little
more about this invisibility of yours.' He had sat down, after one nervous
glance out of the window, with the air of a man who has talking to do.
His doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished
again as he looked across to where Griffin sat at the breakfast-table, --
a headless, handless dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously
held serviette.

`It's simple enough -- and credible enough,' said Griffin, putting the
serviette aside and leaning the invisible head on an invisible hand.

`No doubt, to you, but -- ' Kemp laughed.

`Well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt. But now,
great God! -- But we will do great things yet! I came on the stuff first
at Chesilstowe.'

`Chesilstowe?'

`I went there after I left London. You know I dropped medicine and took
up physics? No? -- well, I did. Light -- fascinated me.

`Ah!'

`Optical density! The whole subject is a network of riddles -- a network
with solutions glimmering elusively through. And being but two-and-
twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, "I will devote my life to this.
This is worth while." You know what fools we are at two-and-twenty?'

`Fools then or fools now,' said Kemp.

`As though Knowing could be any satisfaction to a man!

`But I went to work -- like a nigger. And I had hardly worked and
thought about the matter six months before light came through one of the
meshes suddenly -- blindingly! I found a general principle of pigments
and refraction, -- a formula, a geometrical expression involving four
dimensions. Fools, common men, even common mathematicians, do not know
anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of
molecular physics. In the books -- the books that Tramp has hidden --
there are marvels, miracles! But this was not a method, it was an idea
that might lead to a method by which it would be possible, without
changing any other property of matter, -- except, in some instances,
colours, -- to lower the refractive index of a substance, solid or liquid,
to that of air -- so far as all purposes are concerned.'

`Phew!' said Kemp. `That's odd! But still I don't see quite -- I can
understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone, but personal
invisibility is a far cry.'

`Precisely,' said Griffin. `But consider: Visibility depends on the
action of the visible bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light,
or it reflects it, or does all these things. If it neither reflects nor
refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. You see an
opaque red box, for instance, because the colour absorbs some of the light
and reflects the rest, all the red part of the light, to you. If it did
not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected it all, then it
would be a shining white box. Silver! A diamond box would neither absorb
much of the light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here
and there where the surfaces were favourable the light would be reflected
and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant appearance of flashing
reflections and translucencies, -- a sort of skeleton of light. A glass
box would not be so brilliant, not so clearly visible, as a diamond
box, because there would be less refraction and reflection. See that?
From certain points of view you would see quite clearly through it.
Some kinds of glass would be more visible than others, a box of flint
glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary window glass. A box of
very thin common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it
would absorb hardly any light and refract and reflect very little. And if
you put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you put
it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost altogether,
because light passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted or
reflected or indeed affected in any way. It is almost as invisible as a
jet of coal gas or hydrogen is in air. And for precisely the same reason!'

`Yes,' said Kemp, `that is pretty plain sailing.'

`And here is another fact you will know to be true. If a sheet of glass
is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much more visible
while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque white powder. This is
because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which
refraction and reflection occur. In the sheet of glass there are only
two surfaces; in the powder the light is reflected or refracted by each
grain it passes through, and very little gets right through the powder.
But if the white powdered glass is put into water, it forthwith vanishes.
The powdered glass and water have much the same refractive index;
that is, the light undergoes very little refraction or reflection in
passing from one to the other.

`You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly the
same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible if it is
put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if you will
consider only a second, you will see also that the powder of glass might
be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index could be made the same
as that of air; for then there would be no refraction or reflection as
the light passed from glass to air.'

`Yes, yes,' said Kemp. `But a man's not powdered glass!'

`No,' said Griffin. `He's more transparent!'

`Nonsense!'

`That from a doctor! How one forgets! Have you already forgotten your
physics, in ten years? Just think of all the things that are transparent
and seem not to be so. Paper, for instance, is made up of transparent
fibres, and it is white and opaque only for the same reason that a powder
of glass is white and opaque. Oil white paper, fill up the interstices
between the particles with oil so that there is no longer refraction or
reflection except at the surfaces, and it becomes as transparent as glass.
And not only paper, but cotton fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody
fibre, and bone, Kemp, flesh, Kemp, hair, Kemp, nails and nerves, Kemp,
in fact the whole fabric of a man except the red of his blood  and  the
black  pigment  of  hair,  are  all  made  up of transparent, colourless
tissue. So little suffices to make us visible one to the other. For the
most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than water.

`Great Heavens!' cried Kemp. `Of course, of course! I was thinking only
last night of the sea larvae and all jelly-fish!'

`Now you have me! And all that I knew and had in mind a year after
I left London -- six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I had to
do my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was
a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas, --
he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific
world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went
on working. I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment,
a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon
the world with crushing effect, -- to become famous at a blow. I took
up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps. And suddenly,
not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology.

`Yes?'

`You know the red colouring matter of blood; it can be made white -
colourless -- and remain with all the functions it has now!'

Kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement.

The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the little study. `You may
well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late at night, -- in the
daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students, -- and I worked
then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete into
my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights
burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone.
"One could make an animal -- a tissue -- transparent! One could make
it invisible! All except the pigments. I could be invisible!" I said,
suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge.
It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared
out of the great window at the stars. "I could be invisible!" I repeated.

`To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded
by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a
man, -- the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have
only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator,
teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become -- this.
I ask you, Kemp, if you -- Any one, I tell you, would have flung himself
upon that research. And I worked three years, and every mountain of
difficulty I toiled over showed another from its summit. The infinite
details! And the exasperation, -- a professor, a provincial professor,
always prying. "When are you going to publish this work of yours?"
was his everlasting question. And the students, the cramped means!
Three years I had of it -

`And after three years of secrecy and exasperation, I found that to
complete it was impossible -- impossible.'

`How?' asked Kemp.

`Money,' said the Invisible Man, and went again to stare out of the
window.

He turned round abruptly. `I robbed the old man -- robbed my father.

`The money was not his, and he shot himself.'



CHAPTER 20

AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND STREET


For a moment Kemp sat in silence, staring at the back of the headless
figure at the window. Then he started, struck by a thought, rose, took
the Invisible Man's arm, and turned him away from the outlook.

`You are tired,' he said, `and while I sit, you walk about. Have my
chair.'

He placed himself between Griffin and the nearest window.

For a space Griffin sat silent, and then he resumed abruptly:

`I had left the Chesilstowe cottage already,' he said, `when that
happened. It was last December. I had taken a room in London, a large
unfurnished room in a big ill-managed lodging-house in a slum near Great
Portland Street. The room was soon full of the appliances I had bought
with his money; the work was going on steadily, successfully, drawing
near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly
coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind was still
on this research, and I did not lift a finger to save his character.
I remember the funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy
frost-bitten hillside, and the old college friend of his who read the
service over him, -- a shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling cold.

`I remember walking back to the empty home, through the place that had
once been a village and was now patched and tinkered by the jerry builders
into the ugly likeness of a town. Every way the roads ran out at last
into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps and rank wet weeds.
I remember myself as a gaunt black figure, going along the slippery,
shiny pavement, and the strange sense of detachment I felt from the
squalid respectability, the sordid commercialism of the place.

`I did not feel a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the
victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant required my
attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my affair.

`But going along the High Street, my old life came back to me for a space,
for I met the girl I had known ten years since. Our eyes met.

`Something moved me to turn back and talk to her. She was a very ordinary
person.

`It was all like a dream, that visit to the old places. I did not
feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out from the world into
a desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I put it down
to the general inanity of things. Re-entering my room seemed like the
recovery of reality. There were the things I knew and loved. There stood
the apparatus, the experiments arranged and waiting. And now there was
scarcely a difficulty left, beyond the planning of details.

`I will tell you, Kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated processes.
We need not go into that now. For the most part, saving certain gaps
I chose to remember, they are written in cypher in those books that
tramp has hidden. We must hunt him down. We must get those books again.
But the essential phase was to place the transparent object whose
refractive index was to be lowered between two radiating centres of a
sort of ethereal vibration, of which I will tell you more fully later.
No, not these R”ntgen vibrations -- I don't know that these others of
mine have been described. Yet they are obvious enough. I needed two little
dynamos, and these I worked with a cheap gas engine. My first experiment
was with a bit of white wool fabric. It was the strangest thing in the
world to see it in the flicker of the flashes soft and white, and then
to watch it fade like a wreath of smoke and vanish.

`I could scarcely believe I had done it. I put my hand into the emptiness,
and there was the thing as solid as ever. I felt it awkwardly, and threw
it on the floor. I had a little trouble finding it again.

`And then came a curious experience. I heard a miaow behind me, and
turning, saw a lean white cat, very dirty, on the cistern cover outside
the window. A thought came into my head. "Everything ready for you," I
said, and went to the window, opened it, and called softly. She came in,
purring, -- the poor beast was starving, -- and I gave her some milk.
All my food was in a cupboard in the corner of the room. After that she
went smelling round the room, -- evidently with the idea of making herself
at home. The invisible rag upset her a bit; you should have seen her
spit at it! But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my truckle-bed.
And I gave her butter to get her to wash.'

`And you processed her?'

`I processed her. But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, Kemp! And the
process failed.'

`Failed!'

`In two particulars. These were the claws and the pigment stuff --
what is it? -- at the back of the eye in a cat. You know?'

`Tapetum.

`Yes, the tapetum. It didn't go. After I'd given the stuff to bleach the
blood and done certain other things to her, I gave the beast opium, and
put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus. And after
all the rest had faded and vanished, there remained two little ghosts
of her eyes.'

`Odd!'

`I can't explain it. She was bandaged and clamped, of course, -- so I had
her safe; but she woke while she was still misty, and miaowed dismally,
and some one came knocking. It was an odd woman from downstairs, who
suspected me of vivisecting, -- a drink-sodden old creature, with only a
white cat to care for in all the world. I whipped out some chloroform,
and applied it, and answered the door. "Did I hear a cat?" she asked.
"My cat?" "Not here," said I, very politely. She was a little doubtful
and tried to peer past me into the room; strange enough to her no doubt,
-- bare walls, uncurtained windows, truckle-bed, with the ggas engine
vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points, and that faint ghastly
stinging of chloroform in the air. She had to be satisfied at last and
went away again.'

`How long did it take?' asked Kemp.

`Three or four hours -- the cat. The bones and sinews and the fat were
the last to go, and the tips of the coloured hairs. And, as I say, the
back part of the eye, though iridescent stuff it is, wouldn't go at all.

`It was night outside long before the business was over, and nothing was
to be seen but the dim eyes and the claws. I stopped the gas engine,
felt for and stroked the beast, which was still insensible, and then,
being tired, left it sleeping in the invisible pillow and went to bed.
I found it hard to sleep. I lay awake thinking weak aimless stuff,
going over the experiment over and over again, or dreaming feverishly
of things growing misty and vanishing about me, until everything,
the ground I stood on, vanished, and so I came to that sickly falling
nightmare one gets. About two, the cat began miaowing about the room.
I tried to hush it by talking to it, and then I decided to turn it out.
I remember the shock I had when striking a light -- there were just the
round eyes shining green -- and nothing round them. I would have given
it milk, but I hadn't any. It wouldn't be quiet, it just sat down and
miaowed at the door. I tried to catch it, with an idea of putting it
out of the window, but it wouldn't be caught, it vanished. Then it began
miaowing in different parts of the room. At last I opened the window and
made a bustle. I suppose it went out at last. I never saw any more of it.

`Then -- Heaven knows why -- I fell thinking of my father's funeral
again, and the dismal windy hillside, until the day had come. I found
sleeping was hopeless, and, locking my door after me, wandered out into
the morning streets.'

`You don't mean to say there's an invisible cat at large!' said Kemp.

`If it hasn't been killed,' said the Invisible Man. `Why not?'

`Why not?' said Kemp. `I didn't mean to interrupt.

`It's very probably been killed,' said the Invisible Man. `It was alive
four days after, I know, and down a grating in Great Titchfield Street;
because I saw a crowd round the place, trying to see whence the miaowing
came.

He was silent for the best part of a minute. Then he resumed abruptly:

`I remember that morning before the change very vividly. I must have
gone up Great Portland Street. I remember the barracks in Albany Street,
and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last I found myself sitting
in the sunshine and feeling very ill and strange, on the summit of
Primrose Hill. It was a sunny day in January, -- one of those sunny,
frosty days that came before the snow this year. My weary brain tried
to formulate the position to plot out a plan of action.

`I was surprised to find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how
inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of fact I was worked
out; the intense stress of nearly four years' continuous work left me
incapable of any strength of feeling. I was apathetic, and I tried in
vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries, the passion of
discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall of my father's
grey hairs. Nothing seemed to matter. I saw pretty clearly this was a
transient mood, due to overwork and want of sleep, and that either by
drugs or rest it would be possible to recover my energies.

`All I could think clearly was that the thing had to be carried through;
the fixed idea still ruled me. And soon, for the money I had was almost
exhausted. I looked about me at the hillside, with children playing and
girls watching them, and tried to think of all the fantastic advantages
an invisible man would have in the world. After a time I crawled home,
took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in
my clothes on my unmade bed. Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take
the flabbiness out of a man.

`It's the devil,' said Kemp. `It's the palaeolithic in a bottle.'

`I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know?'

`I know the stuff.'

`And there was some one rapping at the door. It was my landlord with
threats and inquiries, an old Polish Jew in a long grey coat and greasy
slippers. I had been tormenting a cat in the night he was sure, -- the
old woman's tongue had been busy. He insisted on knowing all about it.
The laws of this country against vivisection were very severe, -- he
might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the vibration of the little
gas engine could be felt all over the house, he said. That was true,
certainly. He edged round me into the room, peering about over his
German -- silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind that
he might carry away something of my secret. I tried to keep between him
and the concentrating apparatus I had arranged, and that only made him
more curious. What was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive?
Was it legal? Was it dangerous? I paid nothing but the usual rent. His had
always been a most respectable house -- in a disreputable neighbourhood.
Suddenly my temper gave way. I told him to get out. He began to protest,
to jabber of his right of entry. In a moment I had him by the collar;
something ripped, and he went spinning out into his own passage.
I slammed and locked the door and sat down quivering.

`He made a fuss outside, which I disregarded, and after a time he
went away.

`But this brought matters to a crisis. I did not know what he would do,
nor even what he had power to do. To move to fresh apartments would have
meant delay; altogether I had barely twenty pounds left in the world,
-- for the most part in a bank, -- and I could not afford tthat. Vanish!
It was irresistible. Then there would be an inquiry, the sacking of
my room

`At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or interrupted
at its very climax, I became angry and active. I hurried out with my
three books of notes, my cheque-book, -- the tramp has them now, -- and
directed them from the nearest Post Office to a house of call for letters
and parcels in Great Portland Street. I tried to go out noiselessly.
Coming in, I found my landlord going quietly upstairs; he had heard the
door close, I suppose. You would have laughed to see him jump aside on
the landing as I came tearing after him. He glared at me as I went by
him, and I made the house quiver with the slamming of my door. I heard
him come shuffling up to my floor, hesitate, and go down. I set to work
upon my preparations forthwith.

`It was all done that evening and night. While I was still sitting under
the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolourise blood, there
came a repeated knocking at the door. It ceased, footsteps went away and
returned, and the knocking was resumed. There was an attempt to push
something under the door -- a blue paper. Then in a fit of irritation
I rose and went and flung the door wide open. "Now then?" said I.

`It was my landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something. He held
it out to me, saw something odd about my hands, I expect, and lifted
his eyes to my face.

`For a moment he gaped. Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry, dropped
candle and writ together, and went blundering down the dark passage to
the stairs. I shut the door, locked it, and went to the looking-glass.
Then I understood his terror. My face was white -- like white stone.

`But it was all horrible. I had not expected the suffering. A night of
racking anguish, sickness and fainting. I set my teeth, though my skin
was presently afire; all my body afire; but I lay there like grim death.
I understood now how it was the cat had howled until I chloroformed it.
Lucky it was I lived alone and untended in my room. There were times when
I sobbed and groaned and talked. But I stuck to it. I became insensible
and woke languid in the darkness.

`The pain had passed. I thought I was killing myself and I did not care.
I shall never forget that dawn, the strange horror of seeing that my hands
had become as clouded glass, and watching them grow clearer and thinner
as the day went by, until at last I could see the sickly disorder of
my room through them, though I closed my transparent eyelids. My limbs
became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished, and the little
white nerves went last. I ground my teeth and stayed there to the end.
At last only the dead tips of the finger-nails remained, pallid and white,
and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers.

`I struggled up. At first I was as incapable as a swathed infant,
-- stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak and veryy hungry.
I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where
an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes,
fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table and press my forehead
to the glass.

`It was only by a frantic effort of will that I dragged myself back to
the apparatus and completed the process.

`I slept during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to shut
out the light, and about midday I was awakened again by a knocking.
My strength had returned. I sat up and listened and heard a whispering.
I sprang to my feet and as noiselessly as possible began to detach the
connections of my apparatus, and to distribute it about the room, so as
to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement. Presently the knocking
was renewed and voices called, first my landlord's, and then two others.
To gain time I answered them. The invisible rag and pillow came to hand
and I opened the window and pitched them out on to the cistern cover.
As the window opened, a heavy crash came at the door. Some one had
charged it with the idea of smashing the lock. But the stout bolts I had
screwed up some days before stopped him. That startled me, made me angry.
I began to tremble and do things hurriedly.

`I tossed together some loose paper, straw, packing paper and so forth,
in the middle of the room, and turned on the gas. Heavy blows began
to rain upon the door. I could not find the matches. I beat my hands
on the wall with rage. I turned down the gas again, stepped out of
the window on the cistern cover, very softly lowered the sash, and sat
down, secure and invisible, but quivering with anger, to watch events.
They split a panel, I saw, and in another moment they had broken away the
staples of the bolts and stood in the open doorway. It was the landlord
and his two step-sons, sturdy young men of three or four and twenty.
Behind them fluttered the old hag of a woman from downstairs.

`You may imagine their astonishment on finding the room empty. One of
the younger men rushed to the window at once, flung it up and stared out.
His staring eyes and thick-lipped bearded face came a foot from my face.
I was half minded to hit his silly countenance, but I arrested my doubled
fist. He stared right through me. So did the others as they joined him.
The old man went and peered under the bed, and then they all made a
rush for the cupboard. They had to argue about it at length in Yiddish
and Cockney English. They concluded I had not answered them, that their
imagination had deceived them. A feeling of extraordinary elation took
the place of my anger as I sat outside the window and watched these four
people -- for the old lady came in, glancing suspiciously about her like
a cat, trying to understand the riddle of my behaviour.

`The old man, so far as I could understand his patois, agreed with the
old lady that I was a vivisectionist. The sons protested in garbled
English that I was an electrician, and appealed to the dynamos and
radiators. They were all nervous against my arrival, although I found
subsequently that they had bolted the front door. The old lady peered
into the cupboard and under the bed, and one of the young men pushed
up the register and stared up the chimney. One of my fellow lodgers,
a costermonger who shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared on
the landing, and he was called in and told incoherent things.

`It occurred to me that the radiators, if they fell into the hands of some
acute well-educated person, would give me away too much, and watching my
opportunity, I came into the room and tilted one of the little dynamos
off its fellow on which it was standing, and smashed both apparatus.
Then, while they were trying to explain the smash, I dodged out of the
room and went softly downstairs.

`I went into one of the sitting-rooms and waited until they came down,
still speculating and argumentative, all a little disappointed at finding
no "horrors," and all a little puzzled how they stood with regard to me.
Then I slipped up again with a box of matches, fired my heap of paper and
rubbish, put the chairs and bedding thereby, led the gas to the affair,
by means of an india-rubber tube, and waving a farewell to the room left
it for the last time.

`You fired the house!' exclaimed Kemp.

`Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail -- and no doubt
it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went
out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to
realise the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head
was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I
had now impunity to do.'



CHAPTER 21

IN OXFORD STREET


`In going downstairs the first time I found an unexpected difficulty
because I could not see my feet; indeed I stumbled twice, and there was
an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. By not looking down,
however, I managed to walk on the level passably well.

`My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might
do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind.
I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men
on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generally revel in my
extraordinary advantage.

`But hardly had I emerged upon Great Portland Street, however (my lodgings
was close to the big draper's shop there), when I heard a clashing
concussion and was hit violently behind, and turning saw a man carrying
a basket of soda-water siphons, and looking in amazement at his burden.
Although the blow had really hurt me, I found something so irresistible
in his astonishment that I laughed aloud. "The devil's in the basket,"
I said, and suddenly twisted it out of his hand. He let go incontinently
and I swung the whole weight into the air.

`But a fool of a cabman, standing outside a public house, made a sudden
rush for this, and his extending fingers took me with excruciating
violence under the ear. I let the whole down with a smash on the cabman,
and then, with shouts and the clatter of feet about me, people coming
out of shops, vehicles pulling up, I realised what I had done for myself,
and cursing my folly, backed against a shop window and prepared to dodge
out of the confusion. In a moment I should be wedged into a crowd and
inevitably discovered. I pushed by the butcher boy, who luckily did not
turn to see the nothingness that shoved him aside, and dodged behind
the cabman's four- wheeler. I do not know how they settled the business.
I hurried straight across the road, which was happily clear, and hardly
heeding which way I went, in the fright of detection the incident had
given, plunged into the afternoon throng of Oxford Street.

`I tried to get into the stream of people, but they were too thick for me,
and in a moment my heels were being trodden upon. I took to the gutter,
the roughness of which I found painful to my feet, and forthwith the
shaft of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the shoulder blade,
reminding me that I was already bruised severely. I staggered out of
the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement,
and found myself behind the hansom. A happy thought saved me, and as
this drove slowly along I followed in its immediate wake, trembling
and astonished at the turn of my adventure. And not only trembling,
but shivering. It was a bright day in January and I was stark naked and
the thin slime of mud that covered the road was freezing. Foolish as
it seems to me now, I had not reckoned that, transparent or not, I was
still amenable to the weather and all its consequences.

`Then suddenly a bright idea came into my head. I ran round and got
into the cab. And so, shivering, scared, and sniffing with the first
intimations of a cold, and with the bruises in the small of my back
growing upon my attention, I drove slowly along Oxford Street and past
Tottenham Court Road. My mood was as different from that in which
I had sallied forth ten minutes ago as it is possible to imagine.
This invisibility indeed! The one thought that possessed me was --
how was I to get out of the scrape I was in.

`We crawled past Mudie's, and there a tall woman with five or six yellow-
labelled books hailed my cab, and I sprang out just in time to escape her,
shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. I made off up the roadway to
Bloomsbury Square, intending to strike north past the Museum and so get
into the quiet district. I was now cruelly chilled, and the strangeness of
my situation so unnerved me that I whimpered as I ran. At the northward
corner of the Square a little white dog ran out of the Pharmaceutical
Society's offices, and incontinently made for me, nose down.

`I had never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog what
the eye is to the mind of a seeing man. Dogs perceive the scent of a man
moving as men perceive his vision. This brute began barking and leaping,
showing, as it seemed to me, only too plainly that he was aware of me.
I crossed Great Russell Street, glancing over my shoulder as I did so,
and went some way along Montague Street before I realised what I was
running towards.

`Then I became aware of a blare of music, and looking along the street
saw a number of people advancing out of Russell Square, red shirts, and
the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a crowd, chanting in
the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I could not hope to penetrate,
and dreading to go back and farther from home again, and deciding on
the spur of the moment, I ran up the white steps of a house facing the
Museum railings, and stood there until the crowd should have passed.
Happily the dog stopped at the noise of the band too, hesitated, and
turned tail, running back to Bloomsbury Square again.

`On came the band, bawling with unconscious irony some hymn about "When
shall we see his Face?" and it seemed an interminable time to me before
the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me. Thud, thud,
thud, came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for the moment I
did not notice two urchins stopping at the railings by me. "See 'em,"
said one. "See what?" said the other. "Why -- them footmarks -- bare.
Like what you makes in mud."

`I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping at
the muddy footmarks I had left behind me up the newly whitened steps.
The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded
intelligence was arrested. "Thud, thud, thud, When, thud, shall we see,
thud, his face, thud thud." "There's a barefoot man gone up them steps,
or I don't know nothing," said one. "And he ain't never come down again.
And his foot was a-bleeding."

`The thick of the crowd had already passed. "Looky there, Ted," quoth the
younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise in his voice,
and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim
suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For a moment
I was paralysed.

`"Why, that's rum," said the elder. "Dashed rum! It's just like the ghost
of a foot, ain't it?" He hesitated and advanced with outstretched hand.
A man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl.
In another moment he would have touched me. Then I saw what to do.
I made a step, the boy started back with an exclamation, and with a
rapid movement I swung myself over into the portico of the next house.
But the smaller boy was sharp-eyed enough to follow the movement, and
before I was well down the steps and upon the pavement, he had recovered
from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had
gone over the wall.

`They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the lower
step and upon the pavement. "What's up?" asked some one. "Feet! Look!
Feet running!" Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was
pouring along after the Salvation Army, and this not only impeded me
but them. There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation. At the cost
of bowling over one young fellow I got through, and in another moment I
was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell Square, with six or
seven astonished people following my footmarks. There was no time for
explanation, or else the whole host would have been after me.

`Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I crossed the road and came back
on my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot and dry, the damp impressions
began to fade. At last I had a breathing space and rubbed my feet clean
with my hands, and so got away altogether. The last I saw of the chase
was a little group of a dozen people perhaps, studying with infinite
perplexity a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in
Tavistock Square -- a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them
as Crusoe's solitary discovery.

`This running warmed me to a certain extent, and I went on with a better
courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs hereabouts.
My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful
from the cabman's fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched
by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly and I was lame from a little cut
on one foot. I saw in time a blind man approaching me, and fled limping,
for I feared his subtle intuitions. Once or twice accidental collisions
occurred and I left people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing
in their ears. Then came something silent and quiet against my face,
and across the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow.
I had caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid an occasional
sneeze. And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and
curious sniffing, was a terror to me.

`Then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and shouting
as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in the direction of my lodging,
and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black smoke streaming
up above the roofs and telephone wires. It was my lodging burning; my
clothes, my apparatus, all my resources indeed, except my cheque-book
and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great Portland
Street, were there. Burning! I had burnt my boats -- if ever a man did!
The place was blazing.'

The Invisible Man paused and thought. Kemp glanced nervously out of
the window. `Yes?' he said. `Go on.'



CHAPTER 22

IN THE EMPORIUM


`So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about me
-- and if it settled on me it would betray me! -- weary, coold, painful,
inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible
quality, I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge,
no appliances, no human being in the world in whom I could confide.
To have told my secret would have given me away -- made a mere show and
rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was half minded to accost some passer-by
and throw myself upon his mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and
brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street.
My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered
and warm; then I might hope to plan. But even to me, an Invisible Man,
the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably.

`Only one thing could I see clearly before me, the cold exposure and
misery of the snowstorm and the night.

`And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads leading
from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road, and found myself outside
Omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be bought --
you know the place -- meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil
paintings even -- a huge meandering collection of shops rather than a
shop. I had thought I should find the doors open, but they were closed,
and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped outside, and a
man in uniform -- you know the kind or personage with "Omnium" on his
cap -- flung open the door. I contrived to enter, and walking down the
shop -- it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves
and stockings and that kind of thing -- came to a more spacious region
devoted to picnic baskets and wicker furniture.

`I did not feel safe there, however; people were going to and fro, and
I prowled restlessly about until I came upon a huge section in an upper
floor containing scores and hundreds of bedsteads, and beyond these I
found a resting-place a last among a huge pile of folded flock mattresses.
The place was already lit up and agreeably warm, and I decided to remain
where I was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or three sets of shopmen
and customers who were meandering through the place until closing time
came. Then I should be able, I thought, to rob the place for food and
clothing, and disguised, prowl through it and examine its resources,
perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable plan.
My idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled but acceptable
figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and parcels where
they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and elaborate plans for the
complete realisation of the advantages my invisibility gave me (as I
still imagined) over my fellow- men.

`Closing time arrived quickly enough; it could not have been more than an
hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before I noticed the
blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched doorward.
And then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable alacrity to
tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I left my lair as the crowds
diminished, and prowled cautiously out into the less desolate parts of
the shop. I was really surprised to observe how rapidly the young men
and women whipped away the goods displayed for sale during the day.
All the boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the
boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the displays of this and that,
were being whipped down, folded up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and
everything that could not be taken down and put away had sheets of some
coarse stuff like sacking flung over it. Finally all the chairs were
turned up on to the counters, leaving the floor clear. Directly each of
these young people had done, he or she made promptly for the door with
such an expression of animation as I have rarely observed in a shop
assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters scattering sawdust and
carrying pails and brooms. I had to dodge to get out of the way, and as
it was, my ankle got stung with the sawdust. For some time, wandering
through the swathed and darkened departments, I could hear the brooms
at work. And at last a good hour or more after the shop had been closed,
came a noise of locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I found
myself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries and
showrooms of the place, alone. It was very still; in one place I remember
passing near one of the Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening to
the tapping of bootheels of the passers-by.

`My first visit was to the place where I had seen stockings and gloves
for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil of a hunt after matches,
which I found at last in the drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had
to get a candle. I had to tear down wrappings and ransack a number of
boxes and drawers, but at last I managed to turn out what I sought; the
box label called them lambswool pants, and lambswool vests. Then socks,
a thick comforter, and then I went to the clothing place and got trousers,
a lounge jacket, an overcoat and a slouch hat -- a clerical sort of hat
with the brim turned down. I began to feel a human being again, and my
next thought was food.

`Upstairs was a refreshment department, and there I got cold meat.
There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit the gas and warmed it up
again, and altogether I did not do badly. Afterwards, prowling through
the place in search of blankets -- I had to put up at last with a heap
of down quilts -- I came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate
and candied fruits, more than was good for me indeed -- and some white
burgundy. And near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant idea.
I found some artificial noses -- dummy noses, you know, and I thought
of dark spectacles. But Omniums had no optical department. My nose had
been a difficulty indeed -- I had thought of paint. But the discovery
set my mind running on wigs and masks and the like. Finally I went to
sleep in a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable.

`My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had since
the change. I was in a state of physical serenity, and that was reflected
in my mind. I thought that I should be able to slip out unobserved in the
morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper
I had taken, purchase, with the money I had taken, spectacles and so
forth, and so complete my disguise. I lapsed into disorderly dreams of
all the fantastic things that had happened during the last few days.
I saw the ugly little Jew of a landlord vociferating in his rooms; I
saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman's gnarled face
as she asked for her cat. I experienced again the strange sensation of
seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came round to the windy hillside
and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling "Dust to dust, earth to earth,"
and my father's open grave.

`"You also," said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the
grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they continued
stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never faltered
droning and sniffing through the ritual. I realised I was invisible and
inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their grip on me. I struggled in
vain, I was forced over the brink, the coffin rang hollow as I fell upon
it, and the gravel came flying after me in spadefuls. Nobody heeded me,
nobody was aware of me. I made convulsive struggles and awoke.

`The pale London dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly grey
light that filtered round the edges of the window blinds. I sat up,
and for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with its
counters, its piles of rolled stuff, its heap of quilts and cushions,
its iron pillars, might be. Then, as recollection came back to me,
I heard voices in conversation.

`Then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department which
had already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching. I scrambled to
my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as I did so the
sound of my movement made them aware of me. I suppose they saw merely a
figure moving quietly and quickly away. "Who's that?" cried one, and "Stop
there," shouted the other. I dashed round a corner and came full tilt --
a faceless figure, mind you! -- on a lanky lad of fifteen. He yelled and
I bowled him over, rushed past him, turned another corner, and by a happy
inspiration threw myself flat behind a counter. In another moment feet
went running past and I heard voices shouting, "All hands to the doors!"
asking what was "up" and giving one another advice how to catch me.

`Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits. But -- odd as it may
seem -- it did not occur to me at the moment to take off my clothes as I
should have done. I had made up my mind, I suppose, to get away in them,
and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the counters came a bawling
of "Here he is!"

`I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter, and sent it
whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another round
a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He kept his
footing, gave a view hallo! and came up the staircase hot after me.
Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those bright-coloured pot
things -- what are they?'

`Art pots,' suggested Kemp.

`That's it! Art pots. Well, I turned at the top step and swung round,
plucked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly head as he came
at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and
footsteps running from all parts. I made a mad rush for the refreshment
place, and there was a man in white like a man cook, who took up
the chase. I made one last desperate turn and found myself among lamps
and ironmongery. I went behind the counter of this, and waited for my
cook, and as he bolted in at the head of the chase, I doubled him up
with a lamp. Down he went, and I crouched behind the counter and began
whipping off my clothes as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers,
shoes were all right, but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin.
I heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of
the counter, stunned or scared speechless, and I had to make another
dash for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile.

`"This way, policeman!" I heard some one shouting. I found myself in my
bedstead store-room again, and at the end a wilderness of wardrobes.
I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite
wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared, as the
policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner. They made a
rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers. "He's dropping
his plunder," said one of the young men. "He must be somewhere here."

`But they did not find me all the same.

`I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my ill-luck in
losing the clothes. Then I went into the refreshment-room, drank a little
milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position.

`In a little while two assistants came and began to talk over the business
very excitedly and like the fools they were. I heard a magnified account
of my depredations, and other speculations as to my whereabouts. Then I
fell to scheming again. The insurmountable difficulty of the place,
especially now it was alarmed, was to get any plunder out of it. I went
down into the warehouse to see if there was any chance of packing and
addressing a parcel, but I could not understand the system of checking.
About eleven o'clock, -- the snow having thawed as it fell, and the day
being finer and a little warmer than the previous one, I decided that
the Emporium was hopeless, and went out again, exasperated at my want
of success, with only the vaguest plans of action in my mind.'



CHAPTER 23

IN DRURY LANE


`But you begin to realise now,' said the Invisible Man, `the full
disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter, no covering. To get
clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make of myself a strange
and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with
unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again.'

`I never thought of that,' said Kemp.

`Nor had I. And the snow had warned me of other dangers. I could not
go abroad in snow -- it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too,
would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man -- a bubble.
And fog -- I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy
glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as I went abroad -- in the London air --
I gathered dirt about my ankles, floating smuts and dust upon my skin.
I did not know how long it would be before I should become visible from
that cause also. But I saw clearly it could not be for long.

`Not in London at any rate

`I went into the slums towards Great Portland Street, and found myself
at the end of the street in which I had lodged. I did not go that way,
because of the crowd halfway down it opposite to the still smoking ruins
of the house I had fired. My most immediate problem was to get clothing.
What to do with my face puzzled me. Then I saw one of those little
miscellaneous shops -- news, sweets, toys, stationery, belated Christmas
tomfoolery, and so forth -- an array of masks and noses. I realised
that problem was solved. In a flash I saw my course. I turned about,
no longer aimless, and went -- circuitously in order to avoid the busy
ways, towards the back streets north of the Strand; for I remembered,
though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical costumiers had
shops in that district.

`The day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running streets.
I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was a danger, every
passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I was about to pass him
at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me,
sending me into the road and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom.
The verdict of the cab-rank was that he had had some sort of stroke.
I was so unnerved by this encounter that I went into Covent Garden Market
and sat down for some time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets,
panting and trembling. I found I had caught a fresh cold, and had to
turn out after a time lest my sneezes should attract attention.

`At last I reached the object of my quest, a dirty fly-blown little
shop in a byway near Drury Lane, with a window full of tinsel robes,
sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes and theatrical photographs.
The shop was old- fashioned and low and dark, and the house rose above
it for four storeys, dark and dismal. I peered through the window and,
seeing no one within, entered. The opening of the door set a clanking
bell ringing. I left it open, and walked round a bare costume stand, into
a corner behind a cheval glass. For a minute or so no one came. Then I
heard heavy feet striding across a room, and a man appeared down the shop.

`My plans were perfectly definite. I proposed to make my way into
the house, secrete myself upstairs, watch my opportunity, and when
everything was quiet, rummage out a wig, mask spectacles, and costume,
and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque but still a credible figure.
And incidentally of course I could rob the house of any available money.

`The man who had entered the shop was a short, slight, hunched, beetle-
browed man, with long arms and very short bandy legs. Apparently I
had interrupted a meal. He stared about the shop with an expression
of expectation. This gave way to surprise, and then anger, as he saw
the shop empty. "Damn the boys!" he said. He went to stare up and down
the street. He came in again in a minute, kicked the door to with his
foot spitefully, and went muttering back to the house door.

`I came forward to follow him, and at the noise of my movements he
stopped dead. I did so too, startled by his quickness of ear. He slammed
the house door in my face.

`I stood hesitating. Suddenly I heard his quick footsteps returning,
and the door reopened. He stood looking about the shop like one who was
still not satisfied. Then, murmuring to himself, he examined the back
of the counter and peered behind some fixtures. Then he stood doubtful.
He had left the house door open and I slipped into the inner room.

`It was a queer little room, poorly furnished and with a number of big
masks in the corner. On the table was his belated breakfast, and it
was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me, Kemp, to have to sniff
his coffee and stand watching while he came in and resumed his meal.
And his table manners were irritating. Three doors opened into the
little room, one going upstairs and one down, but they were all shut.
I could not get out of the room while he was there, I could scarcely
move because of his alertness, and there was draught down my back.
Twice I strangled a sneeze just in time.

`The spectacular quality of my sensations was curious and novel, but
for all that I was heartily tired and angry long before he had done his
eating. But at last he made an end and putting his beggarly crockery on
the black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot, and gathering all
the crumbs up on the mustard-stained cloth, he took the whole lot of
things after him. His burden prevented his shutting the door behind him
-- as he would have done; I never saw such a man for shuttiing doors --
and I followed him into a very dirty underground kitchen and scullery.
I had the pleasure of seeing him begin to wash up, and then, finding no
good in keeping down there, and the brick floor being cold to my feet,
I returned upstairs and sat in his chair by the fire. It was burning low,
and scarcely thinking, I put on a little coal. The noise of this brought
him up at once, and he stood aglare. He peered about the room and was
within an ace of touching me. Even after that examination, he scarcely
seemed satisfied. He stopped in the doorway and took a final inspection
before he went down.

`I waited in the little parlour for an age, and at last he came up and
opened the upstairs door. I just managed to get by him.

`On the staircase he stopped suddenly, so that I very nearly blundered
into him. He stood looking back right into my face and listening. "I could
have sworn," he said. His long hairy hand pulled at his lower lip. His eye
went up and down the staircase. Then he grunted and went on up again.

`His hand was on the handle of a door, and then he stopped again with
the same puzzled anger on his face. He was becoming aware of the faint
sounds of my movements about him. The man must have had diabolically
acute hearing. He suddenly flashed into rage. "If there's any one in
this house," he cried with an oath, and left the threat unfinished.
He put his hand in his pocket, failed to find what he wanted, and rushing
past me went blundering noisily and pugnaciously downstairs. But I did
not follow him. I sat on the head of the staircase until his return.

`Presently he came up again, still muttering. He opened the door of the
room, and before I could enter, slammed it in my face.

`I resolved to explore the house, and spent some time in doing so as
noiselessly as possible. The house was very old and tumble-down, damp so
that the paper in the attics was peeling from the walls, and rat-infested.
Some of the door handles were stiff and I was afraid to turn them.
Several rooms I did inspect were unfurnished, and others were littered
with theatrical lumber, bought second-hand, I judged, from its appearance.
In one room next to his I found a lot of old clothes. I began routing
among these, and in my eagerness forgot again the evident sharpness of
his ears. I heard a stealthy footstep and, looking up just in time, saw
him peering in at the tumbled heap and holding an old-fashioned revolver
in his hand. I stood perfectly still while he stared about open-mouthed
and suspicious. "It must have been her," he said slowly. "Damn her!"

`He shut the door quietly, and immediately I heard the key turn in
the lock. Then his footsteps retreated. I realised abruptly that I was
locked in. For a minute I did not know what to do. I walked from door
to window and back, and stood perplexed. A gust of anger came upon me.
But I decided to inspect the clothes before I did anything further, and
my first attempt brought down a pile from an upper shelf. This brought
him back, more sinister than ever. That time he actually touched me,
jumped back with amazement and stood astonished in the middle of the room.

`Presently he calmed a little. "Rats," he said in an undertone, fingers
on lip. He was evidently a little scared. I edged quietly out of the
room, but a plank creaked. Then the infernal little brute started going
all over the house, revolver in hand and locking door after door and
pocketing the keys. When I realised what he was up to I had a fit of rage
-- I could hardly control myself sufficiently to watch my oopportunity.
By this time I knew he was alone in the house, and so I made no more ado,
but knocked him on the head.'

`Knocked him on the head!' exclaimed Kemp.

`Yes -- stunned him -- as he was going downstairs. Hit him from behind
with a stool that stood on the landing. He went downstairs like a bag
of old boots.

`But -- ! I say! The common conventions of humanity -- '

`Are all very well for common people. But the point was, Kemp, that
I had to get out of that house in a disguise without his seeing me.
I couldn't think of any other way of doing it. And then I gagged him
with a Louis Quatorze vest and tied him up in a sheet.'

`Tied him up in a sheet!'

`Made a sort of bag of it. It was rather a good idea to keep the idiot
scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out of -- head away
from the string. My dear Kemp, it's no good your sitting and glaring
as though I was a murderer. It had to be done. He had his revolver.
If once he saw me he would be able to describe me -- '

`But still,' said Kemp, `in England -- today. And the man was in his
own house, and you were -- well, robbing.'

`Robbing! Confound it! You'll call me a thief next! Surely, Kemp, you're
not fool enough to dance on the old strings. Can't you see my position?'

`And his too,' said Kemp.

The Invisible Man stood up sharply. `What do you mean to say?'

Kemp's face grew a trifle hard. He was about to speak and checked himself.
`I suppose, after all,' he said with a sudden change of manner, `the
thing had to be done. You were in a fix. But still

`Of course I was in a fix -- an infernal fix. And he made me wild too -
hunting me about the house, fooling about with his revolver, locking and
unlocking doors. He was simply exasperating. You don't blame me, do you?
You don't blame me?'

`I never blame any one, said Kemp. `It's quite out of fashion. What did
you do next?'

`I was hungry. Downstairs I found a loaf and some rank cheese -- more
than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. I took some brandy and water,
and then went up past my impromptu bag -- he was lying quite still --
to the room containing the old clothes. This looked out upon the street,
two lace curtains brown with dirt guarding the window. I went and peered
out through their interstices. Outside the day was bright -- by contrast
with the brown shadows of the dismal house in which I found myself,
dazzlingly bright. A brisk traffic was going by, fruit carts, a hansom,
a four-wheeler with a pile of boxes, a fishmonger's cart. I turned
with spots of colour swimming before my eyes to the shadowy fixtures
behind me. My excitement was giving place to a clear apprehension of my
position again. The room was full of a faint scent of benzoline, used,
I suppose, in cleaning the garments.

`I began a systematic search of the place. I should judge the hunchback
had been alone in the house for some time. He was a curious person.
Everything that could possibly be of service to me I collected in the
clothes store-room, and then I made a deliberate selection. I found a
handbag I thought a suitable possession, and some powder, rouge, and
sticking- plaster.

`I had thought of painting and powdering my face and all that there was
to show of me, in order to render myself visible, but the disadvantage of
this lay in the fact that I should require turpentine and other appliances
and a considerable amount of time before I could vanish again. Finally I
chose a mask of the better type, slightly grotesque but no more so than
many human beings, dark glasses, greyish whiskers, and a wig. I could
find no underclothing, but that I could buy subsequently, and for the
time I swathed myself in calico dominoes and some white cashmere scarfs.
I could find no socks, but the hunchback's boots were rather a loose
fit and sufficed. In a desk in the shop were three sovereigns and about
thirty shillings' worth of silver, and in a locked cupboard I burst
in the inner room were eight pounds in gold. I could go forth into the
world again, equipped.

`Then came a curious hesitation. Was my appearance really -- credible?
I tried myself with a little bedroom looking-glass, inspecting myself
from every point of view to discover any forgotten chink, but it all
seemed sound. I was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage miser,
but I was certainly not a physical impossibility. Gathering confidence,
I took my looking-glass down into the shop, pulled down the shop blinds,
and surveyed myself from every point of view with the help of the cheval
glass in the corner.

`I spent some minutes screwing up my courage and then unlocked the shop
door and marched out into the street, leaving the little man to get
out of his sheet again when he liked. In five minutes a dozen turnings
intervened between me and the costumier's shop. No one appeared to notice
me very pointedly. My last difficulty seemed overcome.

He stopped again.

`And you troubled no more about the hunchback?' said Kemp.

`No,' said the Invisible Man. `Nor have I heard what became of him.
I suppose he untied himself or kicked himself out. The knots were
pretty tight.'

He became silent, and went to the window and stared out.

`What happened when you went out into the Strand?'

`Oh! -- disillusionment again. I thought my troubles were over.
Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything -
save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the
consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside
my garments and vanish. No person could hold me. I could take my money
where I found it. I decided to treat myself to a sumptuous feast, and
then put up at a good hotel, and accumulate a new outfit of property.
I felt amazingly confident -- it's not particularly pleasant recalling
that I was an ass. I went into a place and was already ordering a
lunch, when it occurred to me that I could not eat unless I exposed my
invisible face. I finished ordering the lunch, told the man I should be
back in ten minutes, and went out exasperated. I don't know if you have
ever been disappointed in your appetite.'

`Not quite so badly,' said Kemp, `but I can imagine it.'

`I could have smashed the silly devils. At last, faint with the desire
for tasteful food, I went into another place and demanded a private room.
"I am disfigured," I said. "Badly." They looked at me curiously, but of
course it was not their affair -- and so at last I got my lunch. It was
not particularly well served, but it sufficed; and when I had had it,
I sat over a cigar, trying to plan my line of action. And outside a
snowstorm was beginning.

`The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realised what a helpless
absurdity an Invisible Man was -- in a cold and dirty climate and a
crowded civilised city. Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt
of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment.
I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt
invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible
to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition -- what is the good of pride
of place when you cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of
woman when her name must needs be Delilah? I have no taste for politics,
for the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was I
to do? And for this I had be- come a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed and
bandaged caricature of a man!'

He paused, and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the window.

`But how did you get to Iping?' said Kemp, anxious to keep his guest
busy talking.

`I went there to work. I had one hope. It was a half idea! I have it
still. It is' a full blown idea now. A way of getting back! Of restoring
what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I mean to do
invisibly. And that is what I chiefly want to talk to you about now.'

`You went straight to Iping?'

`Yes, I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda and my cheque
book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of chemicals to
work out this idea of mine -- I will show you the calculations as soon
as I get my books -- and then I started. Jove! I remember the snowstorm
now, and the accursed bother it was to keep the snow from damping my
pasteboard nose.'

`At the end,' said Kemp, `the day before yesterday, when they found you
out, you rather -- to judge by the papers -

`I did. Rather. Did I kill that fool of a constable?'

`No,' said Kemp. `He's expected to recover.

`That's his luck, then. I clean lost my temper, the fools! Why couldn't
they leave me alone? And that grocer lout?'

`There are no deaths expected,' said Kemp.

`I don't know about that tramp of mine,' said the Invisible Man, with
an unpleasant laugh.

`By Heaven, Kemp, you don't know what rage is! To have worked for years,
to have planned and plotted, and then to get some fumbling purblind idiot
messing across your course! Every conceivable sort of silly creature
that has ever been created has been sent to cross me.

`If I have much more of it, I shall go wild -- I shall start mowing 'em.

`As it is, they've made things a thousand times more difficult.'

`No doubt it's exasperating,' said Kemp, dryly.



CHAPTER 24

THE PLAN THAT FAILED


`But now,' said Kemp, with a side glance out of the window, `what are
we to do?'

He moved nearer his guest as he spoke in such a manner as to prevent the
possibility of a glimpse of the three men who were advancing up the hill
road -- with an intolerable slowness, as it seemed to Kemp.

`What were you planning to do when you were heading for Port Burdock?
Had you any plan?'

`I was going to clear out of the country. But I have altered that plan
rather since seeing you. I thought it would be wise, now the weather is
hot and invisibility possible, to make for the South. Especially as my
secret is known, and every one would be on the lookout for a masked and
muffled man. You have a line of steamers from here to France. My idea
was to get aboard one and run the risks of the passage. Thence I could go
by train into Spain, or else get to Algiers. It would not be difficult.
There a man might always be invisible -- and yet live. And do things.
I was using that tramp as a money box and luggage carrier, until I
decided how to get my books and things sent over to meet me.'

`That's clear.'

`And then the filthy brute must needs try and rob me! He has hidden my
books, Kemp. Hidden my books! If I can lay my hands on him!'

`Best plan to get the books out of him first.'

`But where is he? Do you know?'

`He's in the town police station, locked up, by his own request, in the
strongest cell in the place.'

`Cur!' said the Invisible Man.

`But that hangs up your plans a little.'

`We must get those books; those books are vital.'

`Certainly,' said Kemp, a little nervously, wondering if he heard
footsteps outside. `Certainly we must get those books. But that won't
be difficult, if he doesn't know they're for you.

`No,' said the Invisible Man, and thought.

Kemp tried to think of something to keep the talk going, but the Invisible
Man resumed of his own accord.

`Blundering into your house, Kemp,' he said, `changes all my plans.
For you are a man that can understand me. In spite of all that has
happened, in spite of this publicity, of the loss of my books, of what
I have suffered, there still remain greatpossibilities, huge possibilities

`You have told no one I am here?' he asked abruptly.

Kemp hesitated. `That was implied,' he said.

`No one?' insisted Griffin.

`Not a soul.'

`Ah! Now -- ' The Invisible Man stood up, and sticking his arms akimbo
began to pace the study.

`I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing
through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone --
it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt
a little, and there is the end.

`What I want, Kemp, is a goal-keeper, a helper, and a hiding-place,
an arrangement whereby I can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and
unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with food
and rest -- a thousand things are possible.

`Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that
invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It mean little advantage
for eavesdropping and so forth -- one makes sounds. It's of little help,
a little help perhaps -- in housebreaking and so forth. Once you've caught
me you could easily imprison me. But on the other hand I am hard to catch.
This invisibility, in fact, is only good in two cases: It's useful in
getting away, it's useful in approaching. It's particularly useful,
therefore, in killing. I can walk round a man, whatever weapon he has,
choose my point, strike as I like. Dodge as I like. Escape as I like.'

Kemp's hand went to his moustache. Was that a movement downstairs?

`And it is killing we must do, Kemp.'

`It is killing we must do,' repeated Kemp. `I'm listening to your plan,
Griffin, but I'm not agreeing, mind. Why killing?'

`Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is they know there
is an Invisible Man -- as well as we know there is an Invisible Man.
And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a Reign of Terror.
Yes -- no doubt it's startling. But I mean it. A Reign of Terror.
He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and dominate it.
He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways -- scraps of
paper thrust under doors would sufflce. And all who disobey his orders
he must kill, and kill all who would defend the disobedient.'

`Humph!' said Kemp, no longer listening to Griffin but to the sound of
his front door opening and closing.

`It seems to me, Griffin,' he said, to cover his wandering attention,
`that your confederate would be in a difficult position.'

`No one would know he was a confederate,' said The Invisible Man, eagerly.
And then suddenly, `Hush! What's that downstairs?'

`Nothing,' said Kemp, and suddenly began to speak loud and fast. `I don't
agree to this, Griffin,' he said. `Understand me, I don't agree to this.
Why dream of playing a game against the race? How can you hope to gain
happiness? Don't be a lone wolf. Publish your results; take the world --
take the nation at least -- into your confidence. Think what you might
do with a million helpers

The Invisible Man interrupted Kemp. `There are footsteps coming upstairs,'
he said in a low voice.

`Nonsense,' said Kemp.

`Let me see,' said the Invisible Man, and advanced, arm extended, to
the door.

Kemp hesitated for a second and then moved to intercept him. The Invisible
Man started and stood still. `Traitor!' cried the Voice, and suddenly
the dressing-gown opened, and sitting down the Unseen began to disrobe.
Kemp made three swift steps to the door, and forthwith the Invisible Man
-- his legs had vanished -- sprang to his feet with a shoutt. Kemp flung
the door open.

As it opened, there came a sound of hurrying feet downstairs and voices.

With a quick movement Kemp thrust the Invisible Man back, sprang aside,
and slammed the door. The key was outside and ready. In another moment
Griffin would have been alone in the belvedere study, a prisoner. Save for
one little thing. The key had been slipped in hastily that morning.
As Kemp slammed the door it fell noisily upon the carpet.

Kemp's face became white. He tried to grip the door handle with both
hands. For a moment he stood lugging. Then the door gave six inches.
But he got it closed again. The second time it was jerked a foot wide,
and the dressing-gown came wedging itself into the opening. His throat was
gripped by invisible fingers, and he left his hold on the handle to defend
himself. He was forced back, tripped and pitched heavily into the corner
of the landing. The empty dressing-gown was flung on the top of him.

Halfway up the staircase was Colonel Adye, the recipient of Kemp's letter,
the chief of the Burdock police. He was staring aghast at the sudden
appearance of Kemp, followed by the extraordinary sight of clothing
tossing empty in the air. He saw Kemp felled, and struggling to his feet.
He saw him rush forward, and go down again, felled like an ox.

Then suddenly he was struck violently. By nothing! A vast weight it
seemed, leapt upon him, and he was hurled headlong down the staircase,
with a grip at his throat and a knee in his groin. An invisible foot
trod on his back, a ghostly patter passed downstairs, he heard the two
police officers in the hall shout and run, and the front door of the
house slammed violently.

He rolled over and sat up staring. He saw, staggering down the staircase,
Kemp, dusty and dishevelled, one side of his face white from a blow,
his lip bleeding, holding a pink dressing-gown and some underclothing
in his arms.

`My God!' cried Kemp, `the game's up! He's gone!'



CHAPTER 25

THE HUNTING OF THE INVISIBLE MAN


For a space Kemp was too inarticulate to make Adye understand the swift
things that had just happened. The two men stood on the landing, Kemp
speaking swiftly, the grotesque swathings of Griffin still on his arm.
But presently Adye began to grasp something of the situation.

`He's mad,' said Kemp; `inhuman. He is pure selfishness. He thinks
of nothing but his own advantage, his own safety. I have listened to
such a story this morning of brutal self-seeking! He has wounded men.
He will kill them unless we can prevent him. He will create a panic.
Nothing can stop him. He is going out now -- furious!'

`He must be caught,' said Adye. `That is certain.'

`But how?' cried Kemp, and suddenly became full of ideas. `You must
begin at once. You must set every available man to work. You must
prevent his leaving this district. Once he gets away he may go through
the countryside as he wills, killing and maiming. He dreams of a reign
of terror! A reign of terror, I tell you. You must set a watch on trains
and roads and shipping. The garrison must help. You must wire for help.
The only thing that may keep him here is the thought of recovering some
books of notes he counts of value. I will tell you of that! There is a
man in your police station -- Marvel.'

`I know,' said Adye, `I know. Those books -- yes.

`And you must prevent him from eating or sleeping; day and night the
country must be astir for him. Food must be locked up and secured,
all food, so that he will have to break his way to it. The houses
everywhere must be barred against him. Heaven send us cold nights
and rain! The whole country-side must begin hunting and keep hunting.
I tell you, Adye, he is a danger, a disaster; unless he is pinned and
secured, it is frightful to think of the things that may happen.'

`What else can we do?' said Adye. `I must go down at once and begin
ùorganising. But why not come? Yes -- you come too! Come, and we
must hold a sort of council of war, -- get Hopps to help -- and the
railway managers. By Jove! it's urgent. Come along -- tell me as we go.
What else is there we can do? Put that stuff down.'

In another moment Adye was leading the way downstairs. They found the
front door open and the policemen standing outside staring at empty air.
`He's got away, sir,' said one.

`We must go to the central station at once,' said Adye. `One of you go
on down and get a cab to come up and meet us -- quickly. And now, Kemp,
what else?'

`Dogs,' said Kemp. `Get dogs. They don't see him, but they wind him.
Get dogs.

`Good,' said Adye. `It's not generally known, but the prison officials
over at Halstead know a man with bloodhounds. Dogs. What else?'

`Bear in mind,' said Kemp, `his food shows. After eating, his food
shows until it is assimilated. So that he has to hide after eating.
You must keep on beating -- every thicket, every quiet corner. And put
all weapons, all implements that might be weapons, away. He can't carry
such things for long. And what he can snatch up and strike men with must
be hidden away.

`Good again,' said Adye. `We shall have him yet!'

`And on the roads,' said Kemp, and hesitated.

`Yes?' said Adye.

`Powdered glass,' said Kemp. `It's cruel, I know. But think of what he
may do!'

Adye drew the air in between his teeth sharply. `It's unsportsmanlike.
I don't know. But I'll have powdered glass got ready. If he goes too far

`The man's become inhuman, I tell you,' said Kemp. `I am sure he will
establish a reign of terror -- so soon as he has got over the emotions
of this escape -- as I am sure I am talking to you. Our only chance is
to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon
his own head.'



CHAPTER 26

THE WICKSTEED MURDER


The Invisible Man seems to have rushed out of Kemp's house in a state
of blind fury. A little child playing near Kemp's gateway was violently
caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken, and thereafter
for some hours the Invisible Man passed out of human perceptions. No one
knows where he went nor what he did. But one can imagine him hurrying
through the hot June forenoon, up the hill and on to the open downland
behind Port Burdock, raging and despairing at his intolerable fate, and
sheltering at last, heated and weary, amid the thickets of Hintondean,
to piece together again his shattered schemes agai'nst his species. That
seems the most probable refuge for him, for there it was he re-asserted
himself in a grimly tragical manner about two in the afternoon.

One wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time, and
what plans he devised. No doubt he was almost ecstatically exasperated by
Kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to understand the motives
that led to that deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathise
a little with the fury the attempted surprise must have occasioned.
Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street
experiences may have returned to him, for evidently he had counted on
Kemp's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any
rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can
tell what he did until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing,
perhaps, for humanity, but for him it was a fatal inaction.

During that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside
were busy. In the morning he had still been simply a legend, a terror;
in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of Kemp's drily worded proclamation,
he was presented as a tangible antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or
overcome, and the countryside began organising itself with inconceivable
rapidity. By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself
out of the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that
became impossible. Every passenger train along the lines on a great
parallelogram between Southampton, Manchester, Brighton, and Hor- sham,
travelled with locked doors, and the goods traffic was almost entirely
suspended. And in a great circle of twenty miles round Port Burdock,
men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out in groups
of three and four, with dogs, to beat the roads and fields.

Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes, stopping at every cottage
and warning the people to lock up their houses, and keep indoors unless
they were armed, and all the elementary schools had broken up by three
o'clock, and the children, scared and keeping together in groups,
were hurrying home. Kemp's proclamation -- signed indeed by Adye --
was posted over almost the whole district by four or five o'clock in
the afternoon. It gave briefly but clearly all the conditions of the
struggle, the necessity of keeping the Invisible Man from food and sleep,
the necessity for incessant watchfulness and for a prompt attention to
any evidence of his movements. And so swift and decided was the action
of the authorities, so prompt and universal was the belief in this
strange being, that before nightfall an area of several hundred square
miles was in a stringent state of siege. And before nightfall, too,
a thrill of horror went through the whole watching nervous countryside.
Going from whispering mouth to mouth, swift and certain over the length
and breadth of the county, passed the story of the murder of Mr Wicksteed.

If our supposition that the Invisible Man's refuge was the Hintondean
thickets, then we must suppose that in the early afternoon he sallied
out again bent upon some project that involved the use of a weapon.
We cannot know what the project was, but the evidence that he had the
iron rod in hand before he met Wicksteed is to me at least overwhelming.

We can know nothing of the details of the encounter. It occurred on
the edge of a gravel pit, not two hundred yards from Lord Burdock's
lodge gate. Everything points to a desperate struggle, -- the trampled
ground, the numerous wounds Mr Wicksteed received, his splintered
walking-stick; but why the attack was made -- save in a murderous
frenzy -- it is impossible to imagine. Indeed the theory of madness is
almost unavoidable. Mr Wicksteed was a man of forty-five or forty-six,
steward to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive habits and appearance, the
very last person in the world to ùprovoke such a terrible antagonist.
Against him it would seem the Invisible Man used an iron rod dragged
from a broken piece of fence. He stopped this ùquiet man, going quietly
home to his midday meal, attacked him, beat down his feeble defences,
broke his arm, felled him, and smashed his head to a jelly.

He must have dragged this rod out of the fencing before he met his victim;
he must have been carrying it ready in his hand. Only two details beyond
what has already been stated seem to bear on the matter. One is the
circumstance that the gravel pit was not in Mr Wicksteed's direct path
home, but nearly a couple of hundred yards out of his way. The other is
the assertion of a little girl to the effect that, going to her afternoon
school, she saw the murdered man `trotting' in a peculiar manner across a
field towards the gravel pit. Her pantomime of his action suggests a man
pursuing something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and
again with his walking-stick. She was the last person to see him alive.
He passed out of her sight to his death, the struggle being hidden from
her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight depression in the ground.

Now this, to the present writer's mind at least, lifts the murder out
of the realm of the absolutely wanton. We may imagine that Griffin had
taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of
using it in murder. Wicksteed may then have come by and noticed this rod
inexplicably moving through the air. Without any thought of theInvisible
Man -- for Port Burdock is ten miles away -- he may have pursued it. It is
quite conceivable that he may not even have heard of the Invisible Man.
One can then imagine the Invisible Man making off -- quietly in order
to avoid discovering his presence in the neighbourhood, and Wicksteed,
excited and curious, pursuing this unaccountably locomotive object -
finally striking at it.

No doubt the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his middle-aged
pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which
Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive
his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the
gravel pit. To those who appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of
the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine.

But this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable facts -- for stories of
children are often unreliable -- are the discovery of Wicksteed's body,
done to death, and of the blood-stained iron rod flung among the nettles.
The abandonment of the rod by Griffin, suggests that in the emotional
excitement of the affair, the purpose for which he took it -- if he had
a purpose -- was abandoned. He was certainly an intensely egotistical
and unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody
and pitiful at his feet, may have released some long pent fountain of
remorse to flood for a time whatever scheme of action he had contrived.

After the murder of Mr Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck across the
country towards the downland. There is a story of a voice heard about
sunset by a couple of men in a field near Fern Bottom. It was wailing
and laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever and again it shouted.
It must have been queer hearing. It drove up across the middle of a
clover field and died away towards the hills.

That afternoon the Invisible Man must have learnt something of the rapid
use Kemp had made of his confidences. He must have found houses locked and
secured; he may have loitered about railway stations and prowled about
inns, and no doubt he read the proclamations and realised something of
the nature of the campaign against him. And as the evening advanced, the
fields became dotted here and there with groups of three or four men,
and noisy with the yelping of dogs. These men-hunters had particular
instructions as to the way they should support one another in the case
of an encounter. He avoided them all. We may understand something of his
exasperation, and it could have been none the less because he himself had
supplied the information that was being used so remorselessly against him.
For that day at least he lost heart; for nearly twenty-four hours,
save when he turned on Wicksteed, he was a hunted man. In the night,
he must have eaten and slept; for in the morning he was himself again,
active, powerful, angry, and malignant, prepared for his last great
struggle against the world.



CHAPTER 27

THE SIEGE OF KEMP'S HOUSE


Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper.

`You have been amazingly energetic and clever,' this letter ran, `though
what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a
whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night's rest.
But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you,
and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is
nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of
the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen tell your Colonel
of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me -- the Terror! This is
day one of year one of the new epoch -- the Epoch of the Invisible Man.
I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy.
The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example -- a
man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away,
hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes;
Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will
impress my people. Death starts from the pillar-box by midday. The letter
will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins.
Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also.
To-day Kemp is to die.'

Kemp read this letter twice. `It's no hoax,' he said. `That's his voice!
And he means it.'

He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the
postmark Hintondean, and the prosaic detail, `2d. to pay.'

He got up, leaving his lunch unfinished -- the letter had come by the one
o'clock post -- and went into his study. He rang for his housekeeper,
and told her to go round the house at once, examine all the fastenings
of the windows, and close all the shutters. He closed the shutters of
his study himself. From a locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little
revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the pocket of his
lounge jacket. He wrote a number of brief notes, one to Colonel Ayde,
gave them to his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her
way of leaving the house. `There is no danger,' he said, and added a
mental reservation, `to you.' He remained meditative for a space after
doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch.

He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table sharply.
`We will have him!' he said; `and I am the bait. He will come too far.'

He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after him.
`It's a game,' he said, `an odd game -- but the chances are all for me,
Mr Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin contra mundum --
with a vengeance!'

He stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. `He must get food
every day -- and I don't envy him. Did he really sleep last night?
Out in the open somewhere -- secure from collisions. I wish we could
get some good cold weather instead of the heat.

`He may be watching me now.

He went close to the window. Something rapped smartly against the
brickwork over the frame, and made him start violently.

`I'm getting nervous,' said Kemp. But is was five minutes before he went
to the window again. `It must have been a sparrow,' he said.

Presently he heard the front-door bell ringing, and hurried downstairs.
He unbolted and unlocked the door, examined the chain, put it up, and
opened cautiously without showing himself. A familiar voice hailed him.
It was Adye.

`Your servant's been assaulted, Kemp,' he said round the door.

`What!' exclaimed Kemp.

`Had that note of yours taken away from her. He's close about here.
Let me'

Kemp released the chain, and Adye entered through as narrow an opening
as possible. He stood in the hall, looking with infinite relief at
Kemp refastening the door. `Note was snatched out of her hand. Scared
her horribly. She's down at the station. Hysterics. He's close here.
What was it ùabout?'

Kemp swore.

ù`What a fool I was,' said Kemp. `I might have known. It's not an hour's
walk from Hintondean. Already!'

`What's up?' said Adye.

`Look here!' said Kemp, and led the way into his study. He handed Adye
the Invisible Man's letter. Adye read it and whistled softly. `And you --
?' said Adye.

`Proposed a trap -- like a fool,' said Kemp, `and sent my proposal out
by a maid servant. To him.'

Adye followed Kemp's profanity.

`He'll clear out,' said Adye.

`Not he,' said Kemp.

A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. Adye had a silvery glimpse
of a little revolver half out of Kemp's pocket. `It's a window, upstairs!'
said Kemp, and led the way up. There came a second smash while they were
still on the staircase. When they reached the study they found two of
the three windows smashed, half the room littered with splintered glass,
and one big flint lying on the writing table. The two men stopped in
the doorway, contemplating the wreckage. Kemp swore again, and as he did
so the third window went with a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a
moment, and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into the room.

`What's this for?' said Ayde.

`It's a beginning,' said Kemp.

`There's no way of climbing up here?'

`Not for a cat,' said Kemp.

`No shutters?'

`Not here. All the downstairs rooms -- Hullo!'

Smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs. `Confound
him!' said Kemp. `That must be -- yes -- it's one of the bedrooms.
He's going to do all the house. But he's a fool. The shutters are up,
and the glass will fall outside. He'll cut his feet.'

Another window proclaimed its destruction. The two men stood on the
landing perplexed. `I have it!' said Adye. `Let me have a stick or
something, and I'll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds put on.
That ought to settle him! They're hard by -- not ten minutes

Another window went the way of its fellows.

`You haven't a revolver?' asked Adye.

Kemp's hand went to his pocket. Then he hesitated. `I haven't one --
at least to spare.

`I'll bring it back,' said Adye, `you'll be safe here.

Kemp handed him the weapon.

`Now for the door,' said Adye.

As they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the first-floor
bedroom windows crack and clash. Kemp went to the door and began to slip
the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a little paler than usual.
`You must step straight out,' said Kemp. In another moment Adye was on the
doorstep and the bolts were dropping back into the staples. He hesitated
for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back against the door.
Then he marched, upright and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn
and approached the gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass.
Something moved near him. `Stop a bit,' said a Voice, and Adye stopped
dead and his hand tightened on the revolver.

`Well?' said Adye, white and grim, and every nerve tense.

`Oblige me by going back to the house,' said the Voice, as tense and
grim as Adye's.

`Sorry,' said Adye a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with his
tongue. The Voice was on his left front, he thought. Suppose he were to
take his luck with a shot?

`What are you going for?' said the Voice, and there was a quick movement
of the two, and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of Adye's pocket.

Adye desisted and thought. `Where I go,' he said slowly, `is my own
business.' The words were still on his lips, when an arm came round
his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. He drew
clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was struck in the
mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip. He made a vain clutch at
a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell back. `Damn!' said Adye.
The Voice laughed. `I'd kill you now if it wasn't the waste of a bullet,'
it said. He saw the revolver in mid-air, six feet off, covering him.

`Well?' said Adye, sitting up.

`Get up,' said the Voice.

Adye stood up.

`Attention,' said the Voice, and then fiercely, `Don't try any games.
Remember I can see your face if you can't see mine. You've got to go
back to the house.

`He won't let me in,' said Adye.

`That's a pity,' said the Invisible Man. `I've got no quarrel with you.'

Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced away from the barrel of the
revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the midday sun,
the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and the multitudinous
town, and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet. His eyes came back to
this little metal thing hanging between heaven and earth, six feet away.
`What am I to do?' he said sullenly.

`What am I to do?' asked the Invisible Man. `You will get help. The only
thing is for you to go back.'

`I will try. If he lets me in will you promise not to rush the door?'

`I've no quarrel with you,' said the Voice.

Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye out, and now crouching
among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the study
window-sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen. `Why doesn't
he fire?' whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver moved a little
and the glint of the sunlight flashed in Kemp's eyes. He shaded his eyes
and ùtried to see the source of the blinding beam.

`Surely!' he said, `Adye has given up the revolver.'

`Promise not to rush the door,' Adye was saying. `Don't push a winning
game too far. Give a man a chance.'

`You go back to the house. I tell you flatly I will not promise anything.'

Adye's decision seemed suddenly made. He turned towards the house,
walking slowly with his hands behind him. Kemp watched him -- puzzled.
The revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again, and
became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object following
Adye. Then things happened very quickly. Adye leapt backwards, swung
round, clutched at this little object, missed it, threw up his hands
and fell forward on his face, leaving a little puff of blue in the air.
Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot. Adye writhed, raised himself
on one arm, fell forward, and lay still.

For a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of Adye's
attitude. The afternoon was very hot and still, nothing seemed stirring
in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies chasing each other
through the shrubbery between the house and the road gate. Adye lay on
the lawn near the gate. The blinds of all the villas down the hill-road
were drawn, but in one little green summer-house was a white figure,
apparently an old man asleep. Kemp scrutinised the surroundings of the
house for a glimpse of the revolver, but it had vanished. His eyes came
back to Adye. The game was opening well.

Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at last
tumultuous, but pursuant to Kemp's instructions the servants had locked
themselves into their rooms. This was followed by a silence. Kemp sat
listening and then began peering cautiously out of the three windows,
one after another. He went to the staircase head and stood listening
uneasily. He armed himself with his bedroom poker, and went to examine
the interior fastenings of the ground-floor windows again. Everything was
safe and quiet. He returned to the belvedere. Adye lay motionless over
the edge of the gravel just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by
the villas were the housemaid and two policemen.

Everything was deadly still. The three people seemed very slow in
approaching. He wondered what his antagonist was doing.

He started. There was a smash from below. He hesitated and went
downstairs again. Suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and
the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang
of the iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and opened
the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters, split and splintering,
came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame, save for one
cross bar, was still intact, but only little teeth of glass remained
in the frame. The shutters had been driven in with an axe, and now
the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the window frame and
the iron bars defending it. Then suddenly it leapt aside and vanished.
He saw the revolver lying on the path outside, and then the little weapon
sprang into the air. He dodged back. The revolver cracked just too late,
and a splinter from the edge of the closing door flashed over his head.
He slammed and locked the door, and as he stood outside he heard Griffin
shouting and laughing. Then the blows of the axe, with their splitting
and smashing accompaniments, were resumed.

Kemp stood in the passage trying to think. In a moment the Invisible Man
would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him a moment, and then

A ringing came at the front door again. It would be the policemen. He ran
into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. He made the girl
speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people blundered into
the house in a heap, and Kemp slammed the door again. `The Invisible Man!'
said Kemp. `He has a revolver, with two shots -- left. He's killed Adye.
Shot him anyhow. Didn't you see him on the lawn? He's lying there.'

`Who?' said one of the policemen.

`Adye,' said Kemp.

`We came round the back way,' said the girl.

`What's that smashing?' asked one of the policemen.

`He's in the kitchen -- or will be. He has found an axe

Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible Man's resounding blows on
the kitchen door. The girl stared towards the kitchen, shuddered, and
retreated into the dining-room. Kemp tried to explain in broken sentences.
They heard the kitchen door give.

`This way,' cried Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the policemen
into the dining-room doorway.

`Poker,' said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed a poker to
each policeman. He suddenly flung himself backward.

`Whup!' said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker.
The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sidney
Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon,
as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the floor.

ùAt the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment by
the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters -- possibly with an
idea of escaping by the shattered window.

ùThe axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two
feet from the ground. They could hear the Invisible Man breathing.
`Stand away, you two,' he said. `I want that man Kemp.'

`We want you, said the first policeman, making a quick step forward and
wiping with his poker at the Voice. The Invisible Man must have started
back. He blundered into the umbrella stand. Then, as the policeman
staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed, the Invisible Man
countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled like paper, and the blow
sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs.
But the second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hit
something soft that snapped. There was a sharp exclamation of pain and
the axe fell to the ground. The policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit
nothing; he put his foot on the axe, and struck again. Then he stood,
poker clubbed, listening intent for the slightest movement.

He heard the dining-room window open, and a quick rush of feet within.
His companion rolled over and sat up with the blood running down between
his eye and ear. `Where is he?' asked the man on the floor.

`Don't know. I've hit him. He's standing somewhere in the hall.
Unless he's slipped past you. Doctor Kemp -- sir.'

Pause.

`Doctor Kemp,' cried the policeman again.

The second policeman struggled to his feet. He stood up. Suddenly the
faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could he heard. `Yap!'
cried the first policeman and incontinently flung his poker. It smashed
a little gas bracket.

He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs. Then he
thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room.

`Doctor Kemp,' he began, and stopped short

`Doctor Kemp's in here,' he said, as his companion looked over his
shoulder.

The dining-room window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor Kemp
was to be seen.

The second policeman's opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid.



CHAPTER 28

THE HUNTER HUNTED


Mr Heelas, Mr Kemp's nearest neighbour among the villa holders,
was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp's house began.
Mr Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe "in all
this nonsense" about an Invisible Man. His wife, however, as he was to
be reminded subsequently, did. He insisted upon walking about his garden
just as if nothing was the matter, and he went to sleep in the afternoon
in accordance with the custom of years. He slept through the smashing
of the windows, and then woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of
something wrong. He looked across at Kemp's house, rubbed his eyes and
looked again. Then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening.
He said he was damned, and still the strange thing was visible. The house
looked as though it had been deserted for weeks -- after a violent riot.
Every window was broken, and every window, save those of the belvedere
study, was blinded by the internal shutters.

`I could have sworn it was all right' -- he looked at his watch --
`twenty minutes ago.'

He became aware of a measured concussion and the clash of glass, far
away in the distance. And then, as he sat open-mouthed, came a still more
wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawing-room window wereflung open
violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and garments, appeared
struggling in a frantic manner to throw up the sash. Suddenly a man
appeared beside her, helping her -- Dr Kemp! In another moment the window
was open, and the housemaid was struggling out; she pitched forward and
vanished among the shrubs. Mr Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and
vehemently at all these wonderful things. He saw Kemp stand on the sill,
spring from the window, and reappear almost instantaneously running
along a path in the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who
evades observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and again clambering
a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second he tumbled over and
was running at a tremendous pace down the towards Mr Heelas.

`Lord!' cried Mr Heelas, struck with an idea; `it's that Invisible brute!
It's right, after all!'

With Mr Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook wa
him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting towards
the house at a good nine miles an hour. `Thought he wasn't afraid,'
said the cook. `Mary, just come here?' There was a slamming of doors,
a ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr Heelas bellowing like a bull.
`Shut the doors, shut the windows, shut everything! the Invisible Man
is coming!' Instantly the house was full of screams and directions, and
scurrying feet. He ran to shut the French windows himself that opened on
the veranda; as he did so Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over
the edge of the garden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through
the asparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house.

`You can't come in,' said Mr Heelas, shutting the bolts. `I'm very sorry
if he's after you, but you can't come in!'

Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and then
shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing his efforts were
useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end, and went to hammer
at the side door. Then he ran round by the side gate to the front
of the house, and so into the hill-road. And Mr Heelas staring from
his window -- a face of horror -- had scarcely witnessed Kemp vanish,
ere the asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen.
At that Mr Heelas fled precipitately upstairs, and the rest of the chase
is beyond his purview. But as he passed the staircase window, he heard
the side gate slam.

Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downward direction,
and so it was he came to run in his own person the very race he had
watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere study only four
days ago. He ran it well for a man out of training; and though his face
was white and wet, his wits were cool to the last. He ran with wide
strides, and wherever a patch of rough ground intervened, wherever there
came a patch of raw flints, or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling,
he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet that followed to take
what line they would.

For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill-road was
indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the town
far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been
a slower or more painful method of progression than running. All the
gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun, looked locked and barred;
no doubt they were locked and barred -- by his own orders. But at
any rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this!
The town was rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight behind it,
and people down below were stirring. A tram was just arriving at the
hill foot. Beyond that was the police station. Was that footsteps he
heard behind him? Spurt.

The people below were staring up at him, one or two were running,
and his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quite
near now, and the Jolly Cricketers was noisily barring its doors.
Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel -- the drainage works.
He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the
doors, and then he resolved to go to the police station. In another
moment he had passed the door of the Jolly Cricketers, and was in the
blistering fag end of the street, with human beings about him. The tram
driver and his helper -- arrested by the sight of his furious haste --
stood staring with the tram horses unhitched. Further on the astonished
features of navvies appeared above the mounds of gravel.

His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of his
pursuer, and leapt forward again. `The Invisible Man!' he cried to the
navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration leapt
the excavation and placed a burly group between him and the chase.
Then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned into a little
side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart, hesitated for a tenth of
a second at the door of a sweetstuff shop, and then made for the mouth
of an alley that ran back into the main Hill Street again. Two or three
little children were playing here, and shrieked and scattered running
at his apparition, and forthwith doors and windows opened and excited
mothers revealed their hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street again, three
hundred yards from the tramline end, and immediately he became aware of
a tumultuous vociferation and running people.

He glanced up the street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards off ran a
huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with a spade, and
hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists clenched. Up the
street others followed these too, striking and shouting. Down towards the
town, men and women were running, and he noticed clearly one man coming
out of a shop-door with a stick in his hand. `Spread out! Spread out!'
cried some one. Kemp suddenly grasped the altered condition of the chase.
He stopped, and looked round, panting. `He's close here!' he cried.
`Form a line across -- '

`Aha!' shouted a voice.

He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to face round
towards his unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep his feet, and he
struck a vain counter in the air. Then he was hit again under the jaw,
and sprawled headlong on the ground. In another moment a knee compressed
his diaphragm, and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat, but the
grip of one was weaker that the other; he grasped the wrists, heard
a cry of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came
whirling through the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud.
He felt a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly
relaxed, and with a convulsive effort Kemp loosed himself, grasped a
limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbows near
the ground. `I've got him!' screamed Kemp. `Help! Help! hold! He's down!
Hold his feet!'

In another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle, and
a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an excep-
tionally savage game of Rugby football was in progress. And there was
no shouting after Kemp's cry -- only a sound of blows and feet and a
heavy breathing.

Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible Man threw off a couple
of his antagonists and rose to his knees. Kemp clung to him in front
like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched, and tore
at the Unseen. The tram conductor suddenly got the neck and shoulders
and lugged him back.

Down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. There was,
I am afraid, some savage kicking. Then suddenly a wild scream of `Mercy!
Mercy!' that died down swiftly to a sound like choking.

`Get back, you fools!' cried the muffled voice of Kemp; and there was
a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. `He's hurt. I tell you.
Stand back!'

There was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of eager
eyes saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inches in the air,
and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a constable gripped
invisible ankles.

`Don't you leave go of en,' cried the big navvy, holding a bloodstained
spade; `he's shamming.'

`He's not shamming,' said the doctor, cautiously raising his knee; `and
I'll hold him.' His face was bruised and already going red; he spoke
thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand and seemed to be
feeling at the face. `The mouth's all wet,' he said. And then, `Good God!'

He stood up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side of
the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound of heavy
feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of the crowd.
People now were coming out of the houses. The doors of the Jolly
Cricketers were suddenly wide open. Very little was said.

Kemp felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. `He's not
breathing,' he said, and then, `I can't feel his heart. His side -- ugh!'

Suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy, screamed
sharply. `Looky there!' she said, and thrust out a wrinkled finger.

And looking where she pointed, every one saw, faint and transparent
as though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones
and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp
and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they stared.

`Hullo!' cried the constable. `Here's his feet a-showing!'

And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along his
limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change continued.
It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came the little
white nerves, a hazy grey sketch of a limb, then the glassy bones and
intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first a faint fogginess
and then growing rapidly dense and opaque. Presently they could see his
crushed chest and his shoulders, and the dim outline of his drawn and
battered features.

When at last the crowd made way for Kemp to stand erect, there lay,
naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a young
man about thirty. His hair and beard were white -- not grey with age but
white with the whiteness of albinism, and his eyes were like garnets.
His hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, and his expression was one
of anger and dismay.

`Cover his face!' said a man. `For Gawd's sake, cover that face!' and
three little children, pushing forward through the crowd, were suddenly
twisted round and sent packing off again.

Some one brought a sheet from the Jolly Cricketers; and having covered
him, they carried him into that house.



THE EPILOGUE


So ends the story of the strange evil experiment of the Invisible Man.
And if you would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near Port
Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of the inn is an empty board save
for hat and boots, and the name is the title of this story. The landlord
is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical protrusion,
wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he
will tell you generously of the things that happened to him after that
time, and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found
upon him.

`When they found they couldn't prove who's money was which, I'm blessed,'
he says, `if they didn't try to make me out a blooming treasure trove!
Do I look like a Treasure Trove? And then a gentleman gave me a guinea
a night to tell the story at the Empire Music 'all -- just tell 'em in
my own words -- barring one.'

And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly, you
can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript books in the
story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain, with asseverations
that everybody thinks he has 'em! But bless you! he hasn't. `The Invisible
Man it was took 'em off to hide 'em when I cut and ran for Port Stowe.
It's that Mr Kemp put people on with the idea of my having 'em.'

And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively,
bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar.

He is a bachelor man -- his tastes were ever bachelor, and there are no
women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons -- it is expected of his
more vital privacies, in the matter of braces for example, he still turns
to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent
decorum. His movements are slow, and he.is a great thinker. But he has
a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village,
and his knowledge of the roads of the South of England would beat Cobbett.

And on Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning all the year round, while
he is closed to the outer world, and every night after ten, he goes
into his bar parlour bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with water;
and having placed this down, he locks the door and examines the blinds,
and even looks under the table. And then, being satisfied of his solitude,
he unlocks the cupboard and a box in the cupboard and a drawer in that
box, and produces three volumes bound in brown leather, and places them
solemnly in the middle of the table. The covers are weather-worn and
tinged with an algal green -- for once they sojourned in a ditch and
some of the pages have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord
sits down in an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly, gloating over
the books the while. Then he pulls one towards him and opens it, and
begins to study it -- turning over the leaves backwards and forwards.

His brows are knit and his lips move painfully. `Hex, little two up in
the air, cross and fiddle-de-dee. Lord! what a one he was for intellect!'

Presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks through his smoke across
the room at things invisible to other eyes. `Full of secrets,' he says.
`Wonderful secrets!

`Once I get the haul of them -- Lord!

`I wouldn't do what he did; I'd just -- well!' He pulls at his pipe.

So he lapses into a dream, the undying wonderful dream of his life.
And though Kemp has failed unceasingly, and Adye has questioned closely,
no human being save the landlord knows those books are there, with
the subtle secrets of invisibility and a dozen other strange secrets
written therein. And none other will know of them until he dies.


[End]

    Source: geocities.com/martinwguy